


married at first sight

by nothingbutniall



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Strangers to Lovers, Weddings, married at first sight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:33:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 38,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26216452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nothingbutniall/pseuds/nothingbutniall
Summary: Dan and Phil get matched together on the new season of Married At First Sight.
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 85
Kudos: 110





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: the way Married At First Sight works in this story is a mix of the process in different countries. It is not a perfect copy of the show you may know.

The computer screen stares at him, cursor blinking ever more urgently halfway down the page.

Phil feels a bit sick to his stomach, and he’s not sure if it’s the nerves or the alcohol. He can’t believe he’s actually doing this.

“Come on, Lester, click that damn button already, will you?”

Phil glances sideways at PJ. It’s all his fault. If they hadn’t got sloshed on too-sweet cocktails, PJ would not have been able to pressure Phil into doing something as stupid and reckless as signing up for a new season of _Married At First Sight_.

It’s just a drunk mistake though, one they’ll be able to laugh at come next week.

(Hopefully.)

A tiny voice in the back of Phil’s mind whispers it’d be a cool experience, getting an inside look at the selection procedure. Tv shows have always fascinated him, ever since he made his friends play along in their own thriller movie when they were twelve. Now, age thirty, he’s the proud owner of a video editing degree he doesn’t use to its full purpose nearly enough. Maybe taking part in a reality tv show could open some doors for him…

Regardless of his fascination with tv shows, Phil knows the chances of him even making it through the first round of selections are pretty much non-existent. And even if he does miraculously pass the first cut, he doesn’t really believe the experts would be able to find a match for him anyway. He’s always been told he’s weird. Nobody ever means it in a mean way (except for that one guy in sixth form who’d said it with such disgust it had made Phil rethink all of his actions for a week after); it’s always said with fondness, sometimes even admiration. Even PJ, who is definitely not lacking when it comes to the creative department, has admitted to wanting to swim in Phil’s brain for a day, just to see what it looks like.

(Then again, Phil isn’t sure how much of a compliment it really was, because PJ said the same about Trump, claiming he wants to see the twisted knots that _must_ be present in his head. Phil doesn’t care much for politics, but even so, being compared to Trump doesn’t sit right with him.)

He fills out his address, adds _video editor_ as his job rather than _translator English/German_ because it sounds cooler, even though he has to combine both to make the ends meet, and hesitates at the ‘Looking for…’ question for only a second before selecting _husband_.

That alone is probably enough to kick him out of the selection process. He remembers from previous years that the experts would talk about the pool of gay men being too limited to create a match with enough potential. Phil’s not sure if that was all there was to it; he suspected that it might have also been a ratings thing. Despite everything, a gay couple on a national channel at primetime is sure to cause some uproar across the country still.

He sighs and leans his head against PJ’s shoulder. “Why am I even trying?”

PJ kisses the top of Phil’s head, but doesn’t respond verbally and simply takes Phil’s laptop from him to finish the sign-up form.

Phil isn’t sure what the silence is supposed to mean.

He just hopes PJ doesn’t write down anything too embarrassing.

(The next morning, there is an email in Phil’s inbox that confirms he did indeed sign up for _Married At First Sight_. Phil groans and buries his head in his pillow. He hates PJ.)

♡

As a general law of nature, Dan doesn’t step out of his comfort zone. Ever.

He used to, back when he was a teenager, excitement running through his veins at the thought of turning eighteen, being able to do and be whatever he wanted.

Since then, the thrill of freedom has worn off. Turning eighteen hadn’t actually changed that much for him – he was still stuck in a shitty town, forced to hang out with shitty friends, and witness his parents’ shitty marriage reach another record-level low. Every move he made only seemed to push him deeper into a life he didn’t want.

He has managed to climb his way up though, and the last few years have been uneventful in the nicest way possible. Moving to London was the only time stepping out of his comfort zone had actually proven to be worth it, and everything that happened afterwards was simply a result of him being the right person in the right place at the right time.

Dan would have been more than happy to stay in his bubble.

Nonetheless, here he is, in front of his computer, the _Married At First Sight_ website open in his browser.

He doesn’t really care about the marriage part of the deal, would rather they just skipped the whole ceremony and sent him straight to a fancy holiday resort with some fit guy, but the idea of being matched to his scientific soulmate appeals to him. Dan doesn’t believe in love at first sight and even less in forever, but he does believe in science, so he’s willing to give it a shot. For the sake of science, he tells himself.

It sounds like only half a truth even to his own ears.

There are butterflies in his stomach when he types in his email address, and he hopes they turn out to be a good omen.

(Not that he believes in that, but, you know. It’s a saying.)

As he answers each question, the butterflies slow down, and instead, Dan finds himself fascinated by the process. He’d love to know the exact reasoning and formulas that go into creating a match, and what biases the experts might have. He wonders if, in a few more years, digital innovation will be able to create more accurate matches, and if the future of dating is not random Tinder hook-ups, but scientifically arranged pairings.

He bullshits his way through the questions, constantly balancing on the fine line between making himself sound intriguing and revealing too much.

As it turns out, it’s not the questionnaire that is the difficult part of the application, it’s the portrait photograph they request. Dan spends entirely too long going through all of his photos trying to find one that doesn’t scream _former emo kid trying to be cool_. He settles for a slightly too posed picture taking by his friend Bryony earlier in the year during her annual _Eurovision Song Contest_ party. He’s wearing a black sequined jacket that glitters in the soft lighting of the photo, a rainbow flag in the corner of the room, out of focus but obvious. Dan cracks a smile at how cliché it all is.

Finally, he clicks the submit button, then decides to text his latest Grindr hook-up. He could do with some stress relief.

♡

Phil had almost forgotten he’d signed up for _Married At First Sight_ when the email comes in.

The subject line reads, _Congratulations, you are one step closer to finding the one!_

The optimism makes Phil laugh, but he can’t help but feel encouraged, too. Maybe there _is_ someone out there for him. Someone who can level with him in life.

A thought crosses his mind to call his mum, but he’s quick to dismiss it. It’s only the first step in a process he doesn’t even know the length of, and while the email sounds promising, the chances of him not getting selected for the show are still much, much bigger than that one tiny chance that he _will_ end up marrying a stranger on tv.

Phil smiles as he imagines his mum’s shrieking and focuses his attention on the email again. It talks about the number of applications they received and how his profile could be a good fit for some of the other applicants. At the bottom, some of the couples who found love in previous seasons are quoted saying things like “ _This changed my entire life!_ ” and “ _I cannot imagine my life without her anymore_ ”. Accompanying the quotes are pictures of the couples, all looking lovey-dovey with wide smiles.

It looks a bit like an ad for a dating website, if Phil’s being honest, a little too fake and constructed, but there’s a part of him that loves it.

Attached to the email is a list of various aspects about his preferred partner that he needs to rate from one to seven. It’s easy to type in a 6 for “I’m scared when I can’t control what’s happening” and a 3 for “I like being the centre of attention”, but he goes back and forth on his score for “Every discussion should be reasonable” before settling on what feels like a safe 4.

He tries not to overthink his answers and be as honest as possible, though he feels a little vulnerable exposing this much of his personality to a team of experts he’s never met. The questions about his sexual preferences are his least favourite. He never completely got rid of the guilt that plagued him in his teenage years, when he felt like an alien for liking boys the way other boys liked girls. Even though the email explicitly states that none of his answers will ever be made public, Phil can’t help but feel a little uncomfortable to write everything down so explicitly.

The sun moves through the flat as Phil quantifies his entire character and then some, and when PJ comes home from work, he peers over Phil’s shoulder to get a look at the document.

“Oh, so you’re attracted to intelligent people, are you?” he reads out with a grin. “No wonder you never even looked at me twice.”

Phil rolls his eyes and snaps his laptop shut before PJ sees any of the more incriminating answers.

As if PJ isn’t one of the smartest people he knows. He might not be book-smart, but he’s definitely life-smart. “The first time we met, you were gushing about your girlfriend,” Phil reminds him. “Don’t really fancy taken guys.”

“Well…” PJ raises his eyebrows.

“Shut up.” Phil’s cheeks flush at the memory. “He kissed me first. I didn’t know.”

It hadn’t even been as bad as PJ makes it sound. Phil had met a guy at one of PJ’s friends’ party and they’d chatted for a while, flirting openly. About an hour into their conversation, the guy (Phil does barely even remember his name) had kissed him, just like that, only for Phil to see a text from his girlfriend as he was typing his number into the guy’s phone. He’d switched the last two digits of his number and pretty much dragged PJ outside, claiming a raging headache.

He’d never seen the guy again.

“That’s the good thing about this show though,” PJ said. “You know for sure they did a thorough background check on these people. No secret children or crazy serial killers for you!”

PJ’s enthusiasm is infectious, and Phil finds himself laughing, too. “They could still be cannibals though. They didn’t ask that question.”

A frown appears on PJ’s face for a second, thinking it through, before his face splits in a wide smile. “One of the experts visits your house, right? You wouldn’t be able to hide it then.”

Phil is about to retort with all the ways you _could_ hide your cannibalistic streaks, but PJ knows him well enough by now and he quickly clasps a hand over Phil’s mouth. “You know what, never mind. I’d like to enjoy my dinner still. Up for pizza?”

It’s a dumb question and the number one reason why PJ could never be Phil’s soulmate, because that person would _know_ that he’s always up for pizza. Maybe he should add that in the email when he sends the questionnaire back – _potential husband needs to love pizza or else it’s a doomed match._

♡

Dan’s flat has never looked this tidy before, save for the day he moved in. He’s vacuumed the entire place, even those difficult-to-get-to spots behind the sofa and under his bed, and the kitchen floor is still a little slippery from the amount of soap he used to mop.

He’s not sure who he’s trying to kid here, because even the shiny windows and spotless counters can’t hide the fact that he’s really just a twenty-something playing house. His wardrobe is made up of a lop-sided Ikea clothing rack that doesn’t quite fit all of his clothes, so he’s just crammed half of them in the suitcase he keeps in the utility closet, and the print he’s got up in the hallway has a crack in the glass from when he stumbled into it tripping over his own shoes.

When Dan goes to pee for the fourth time in thirty minutes, the ocean breeze toilet spray he bought starts to make him feel slightly nauseous. It doesn’t smell like ocean breeze as much as it smells like teenage boy locker rooms.

If he wasn’t so nervous, he’d laugh at himself for taking the whole thing so serious.

His phone blinks the same time as it did last time he looked, and Dan is about to throw it out the window when the doorbell rings. For a second, his brain short circuits and he just stares at the door, but he quickly regains his composure and buzzes the team in.

He can hear their heavy footsteps on the stairs, no doubt having been scared off by the dingy looking lift, and he breathes in very deeply, holding his breath for ten seconds before slowly releasing the air again.

He opens the door right as the team makes it to his floor, the woman in front already reaching out her hand to him.

“Hi Dan, my name is Helen, producer of _Married At First Sight_. It’s so nice to meet you.”

A little stiffly, Dan returns the handshake, then greets the camera and sound men before inviting them into his flat. He cringes when he spots a cobweb in the corner of the living room ceiling and hopes the team won’t catch onto it.

“So, Dan,” Helen is quick to take the lead, “we’re going to mic you up, and then we’ll do a few introduction shots before our expert will come up and join us. Does that sound alright?”

He nods, then scrapes his voice and says: “Yes. Sounds good.”

The guy who puts the mic on him is called Mike, and he’s so chill Dan finds himself relaxing, too. He does keep an eye on the camera guy, Oliver, who’s filming some close-up shots of Dan’s gaming collection and the moon mirror in the living room. Dan isn’t sure if he’s simply adjusting some camera settings or if these shots could actually end up in the show, so he’s just making sure Oliver or Helen don’t open any drawers or cupboards without his consent.

When Helen calls the expert and second camera man to come up, Dan’s nerves return in full force. He hopes the panic doesn’t show on his face as he’s filmed walking to the door to let the expert in, whose face he recognises from the previous season of the show, but her name escapes him.

“Hello,” he stammers.

“Hi, Dan. I’m Charlotte, I’m so glad to meet you.” She looks sincere, as if visiting desperate singles looking for a partner truly is her passion. Maybe it is.

“Hi, nice to meet you.”

It’s clear that Charlotte is used to people being a little overwhelmed, because she swiftly moves past him and enters his flat, camera man two staying outside the door while camera guy one, Oliver, is filming from another angle.

“You’ve got yourself a cosy space here. Lovely view over London,” Charlotte chitchats.

“Yeah, I lucked out with this flat. It’s not quite the city centre of course, but I like the green in this area, and the train connections are great.”

Charlotte asks a _lot_ of questions, most of which Dan answers on autopilot, because he doesn’t get the chance to overthink what he says. It doesn’t feel like a deliberate strategy from Charlotte, just an accurate reflection of her extraverted nature.

Dan is proud of himself for not stumbling over his words as he sketches the background of his life, from growing up in Wokingham to truly finding himself in London. He’s smiling as he explains what does as an ambassador for Young Minds and it seems to intrigue Charlotte, because she’s nodding along with him in encouragement.

“Would you say it’s a charity close to your heart?” she asks.

“Definitely,” Dan replies instantly. “I remember feeling so lost as a teenager, and it would have made such a difference if someone had told me that I wasn’t alone in that, that there are people out there who can help. Schools make you do PE for hours every week, but none of my teachers ever checked in on our mental health, even though it is just as important for your wellbeing.”

Briefly, Dan wonders if he’s gone overboard, if maybe pouring his heart out like this is a little too intense for a first interview, but it’s only fair. He is who he is, thanks to or despite his depressive episodes, and if his partner can’t deal with that, the match is doomed from the beginning.

“I can see you’re into video games,” Charlotte changes the subject, seeming to sense that Dan doesn’t want to expand on the subject further.

He laughs and runs a hand through his hair. “Yeah, can’t deny it, can I?” He gestures to the bookshelf that houses a collection of games, as well as some figurines and artwork from his favourite games. “Do you want a rundown of all of them?” he jokes.

It makes the whole team laugh, though everyone besides Charlotte tries to stifle the sound.

“I’m good, I’m good,” Charlotte assures him with a grin.

She asks some more questions, mostly about what he’s looking for in a partner, to which he replies truthfully, “Just someone who’s supportive. A bit geeky, and someone you can have a laugh with, but who’s also comfortable sitting in silence and watch tv.”

Afterwards, when the team has left, Dan allows himself to feel hopeful. The visit went fine, and Charlotte seemed capable, seemed to understand the type of person he is.

Dan knows his chances are slim, but who knows… There has to be only one person that ticks all the boxes.


	2. Chapter 2

Two months have passed since Dan was sat in this chair for the first time, talking to a psychologist about himself and what he expects from a relationship.

He’s not new to psychologists, knows their little tricks and how they talk when they want you to confide in them. Over the years, he’s had a range of different psychologists and psychiatrists and therapists before he found someone he clicked with, an even though Dan is quite used to therapy now, he’d never imagined talking to a psychologist who could end up marrying him off to a complete stranger.

Sometimes he wonders what the hell he got himself into.

The office he’s in now looks nothing like the one from his regular therapist; it looks more like a stylised talk show set, warm yellow walls providing a nice backdrop against the rich blue of the chairs, a wooden coffee table in front of it. There’s a glass of water on top of it, Dan’s most fool proof way to delay answering an uncomfortable question.

Opposite him sits Simon, the psychologist Dan talked to the first time he came here. The second time, it had been Gemma, the relationship therapist and sexologist that worked for the programme.

It’s the third time Dan’s here now and he’s growing a bit tired of the conversations. He hopes it’s the last one.

“How have you been, Dan?” Simon asks with the same gentle smile as always, his trimmed beard hiding most of the laughing wrinkles by his mouth. “It’s been a while since we last spoke.”

Dan shrugs one shoulder, more out of habit than genuine disinterest. “I’ve been well. Had some busy weeks at work, so I wanted to sleep in today, but then you scheduled this session.” He smiles.

“Oh no, sorry for that,” Simon chuckles. “Then I think you’ll be glad to hear that this is the last session.”

Raising his eyebrows, Dan lets out a questioning “Oh?”

Simon nods. “Dan, I won’t be stretching this out any longer than necessary – I’m very happy to inform you that we found a match for you. You’re going to get married. Congratulations!”

The words don’t immediately register in Dan’s brain and he just stares at Simon dumbfounded. “A match,” he echoes. “Oh my God. Wow.” His voice sounds robotic even to his own ears.

“What do you feel right now?” Simon prompts, ever the psychologist.

It’s only now that Dan spots the blinking red dot of what he assumes is a hidden camera behind the plant in the corner. He forces himself not to look around and see where the other cameras are.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget he’s a guinea pig in a social experiment, and that Simon isn’t doing this from the goodness of his heart (at least not completely).

Dan shakes his head in a futile attempt to gather his thoughts. “Um. Surprise, mostly. I think I didn’t really expect you to actually find someone.” He laughs nervously. “Wow,” he repeats. “I’m actually going to get married.”

“You are,” Simon confirms with a smile. “Happy?”

“Yes. Definitely.” Dan lets out a deep breath. “Just can’t quite wrap my head around it yet.”

Simon nods in understanding. Dan thinks he’s probably not the first person to go into some sort of shock when being told the big news.

Suddenly, a worrying thought crosses his mind. “Just to check, you matched me to a man, right?”

A laugh escapes Simon, the question clearly throwing him off guard a little. “No worries, we did. We’ve been listening to what you’ve said in these sessions, you know,” he teases.

“Just checking,” Dan sighs in relief. “I guess I’m just surprised you managed to find someone you think is a good fit for me.”

“I think you’ll like him. He ticks a lot of the boxes,” Simon confides in him. He interlocks his fingers, putting on his serious face. “Okay, Dan, congratulations again. I’ll see you back here when you’re a married man!”

After saying goodbye to him, Dan walks out of the building in a daze. On the street, he takes a big gulp of fresh air and leans his head against the brick wall.

Married.

Him.

Who would’ve thought?

He grabs his phone out of his pocket, but his fingers tremble too much as he tries to search for a contact, and he isn’t sure who to call anyway. His mum would probably react a bit too enthusiastically for him to handle, and he doubts his grandma understands the concept of the programme. His friend Bryony is an option, but she’s at work with no access to her phone, so Dan will just have to suffer in silence for the time being.

He wonders how his match reacted to the news, if his heart was hammering against his ribcage as well. Dan likes to think of himself as a rational person, but there’s nothing rational about the way his hands have gone sweaty or the nervous butterflies he feels in his stomach right now.

Or maybe his match doesn’t even know he’s getting married yet, maybe Dan is the first of them to know. Suddenly, he looks at the men in the street very differently. Is anyone going into the building? Anyone who looks like they could be his scientific partner?

There are a few men walking down the street, though most look a bit older. Dan doesn’t mind a more experienced partner, but he draws the line at men who could’ve been his father. He’s not _that_ sort of kinky.

Unfortunately (or maybe not), nobody walks through the doors in the fifteen minutes that it takes Dan to get himself together. He takes another deep breath and pushes himself off the wall, walking in the direction of the underground.

Now that his brain can command his fingers properly again, he types out a message to his grandma.

_Hey grandma, just wanted to let you know I’m going to be a participant on a tv show called Married At First Sight and I’m going to be marrying a stranger. Expect a wedding invite soon! Love, Dan. P.S.: don’t call me if you’re going to yell at me._

He knows his grandma will be cross with him, not even because he’s marrying a person he’s never met, but mostly because he’s telling her over text. He doesn’t dare to call her to tell her directly though. He loves his grandma a lot, but she can be very intimidating when she thinks he’s being reckless, and there’s no denying that this whole ordeal is the most reckless he’s been in a while.

(And then, of course, it’s not just him marrying a stranger. It’s him marrying a man.

He’s not sure how well that’s gonna go over, and he’s in no rush to find out, either.)

Right before he’s about to take the stairs to the underground station, his phone starts ringing. He doesn’t have to look at the screen to know it’s his grandma.

Dan hesitates for a second, but he really does not want to hear it if she’s disappointed, so he lets the phone ring. He’ll call her back tonight and say the reception on the train was bad.

He just hopes she’s not too cross with him.

♡

Maybe it’s the cameras, maybe it’s the fact that it’s been at least 10 years since Phil last went shopping with his mother, maybe it’s the uncomfortable fanciness of the shop, but fact is that Phil despises this shopping trip already.

He doesn’t have a fashioned bone in his body, let alone have any clue about wedding suits. When the owner of the store had asked what style he was looking for, Phil had stared at him blankly and asked, more than said, “Black?”

So now Phil’s sat on a velvet sofa as he watches his mum chat with the store owner about fabrics and buttons and lapels, and he tries not to look like a child as much as he feels like one. Phil didn’t even know lapels came in different styles.

His brother Martin finds it all very amusing, and he points out a red and black plaid blazer with matching trousers. “That’d suit you.”

If the cameras hadn’t been rolling, Phil would’ve pushed him off the sofa. As it is, he can only frown deeply. “I’m gonna feel like a clown anyway, don’t need the suit to make me look it, too.”

“Phil,” his mum calls out. “Come here, darling, Jean has some suits for you to try on.” It doesn’t surprise Phil that she’s on a first name basis with the owner already. She looks totally at ease as she runs her fingers over the different coloured dress shirts and pulls out a light blue one. “This one would go as well, wouldn’t it?” The question isn’t directed towards Phil.

Before his mother can add more pieces to the try-on pile, Phil quickly stands up and makes his way over to Jean. “Ready.”

“Alright, son, let’s get you in the first suit,” Jean says. His near-white hair and tanned skin give him a friendly appearance, like a grandad advising the younger generation, and Phil feels some of the tension leave his shoulder. Jean continues, “It’s a dark blue jacket with the same trousers that can be paired with a classic white button-down or this slightly more playful light blue one with darker stitching.”

His effort to explain the pieces to him is commendable, but Phil still just sees a dark blue suit. He decides to go for the white shirt first. Weddings are all about traditional, right?

The dressing room doesn’t have a mirror, which Phil suspects is probably done on purpose to force the groom-to-be to walk out into the store where guests can give their opinion, too.

He tries not to focus on the camera that is right in his face as he walks towards the mirrored area. From the corner of his eye, he can see his mum clapping a hand in front of her mouth. It makes him smile a bit.

When he’s standing in front of the big mirrors, Phil takes a deep breath before bringing his eyes up to see himself.

He barely recognises the person looking back at him. Whereas he normally looks a couple of years younger than his real age due to his love for graphic T-shirts, the suit gives him a more mature look, accentuating his slender figure without making him look scrawny.

It doesn’t look half-bad.

“This is so weird,” he flaps out.

“You look so handsome,” his mum says wistfully. Her eyes are slightly shiny.

“Not bad, bro,” Martin agrees. “I’m not sure about the colour though.”

Phil nods. While the overall look of the suit is very complimenting, the dark blue seems to clash slightly with his pale complexion and raven black hair. “I think I should try on the black instead.”

The producer chimes in, “Phil, can you tell a bit more about what you like and don’t like about the suit?”

Phil is startled for a second, having almost been able to forget that he’s being filmed, then stutters: “The, uh, cut of the suit is very nice. I like that this border-”

“Lapel,” Jean corrects with a friendly smile.

“I like that this lapel is a slightly different colour than the rest of the suit. Overall, however, I don’t think blue is really my colour.”

The producer nods, seemingly satisfied, and Phil walks off to the dressing room again. He can hear his mum and brother being interviewed now, though he can’t make out exactly what they’re saying.

He spends a bit longer putting on the suit than strictly necessary, hoping this will be the one. They’re only two fittings in, but he doesn’t think he can muster up the energy or enthusiasm for many more.

The second he steps outside, it’s clear that this suit is going to be his wedding suit. Martin’s mouth literally falls open and his mum starts crying for real now, mumbling “ _oh, Phil_ ” under her breath.

Even the film crew looks impressed, and Phil understands why when he catches sight of himself in the mirror. Though the black suit is very simple, Jean has paired it with a dark purple patterned shirt, giving the look more depth. The colours are striking against his pale skin tone without washing him out, and his eyes seem bluer.

He looks _and_ feels like a groom.

“This is it,” he declares. “I love it.”

“You look stunning,” his mum sniffs. “Absolutely wonderful. I’m so proud.”

Martin smiles. “It’s a very _you_ suit. Really nice.”

“And they say black goes with everything, right?” Phil looks at Jean to check. “Because I obviously don’t know what my husband will wear.” Anxiety strikes in his chest at the thought of looking ridiculous next to his husband. This might be Phil’s only chance of marriage and he would hate for the wedding pictures to be ruined by clashing suits.

Or worse, what if they both end up wearing black suits? It’s a wedding, not a funeral! His eyes dash towards the lilac suit on display on a mannequin. Maybe he should do something out of the ordinary. If his husband has the same idea of wearing a bright-coloured suit, at least clashing suits can be excused as high-fashion.

Martin must see the panic on his face and comes in to rescue him from his own thoughts. “You can never go wrong with black. You’ll look very classy.”

Despite the whole ordeal only taking just under an hour, the producer wants to get some more shots and quotes from all three of them, and so it’s nearing five o’clock before Phil rings up his new clothes.

As Jean calculates his total, his mum throws a pair of black socks onto the pile.

Phil frowns. “What? Why, mum? I’ve got socks at home.”

She pats his arm. “You can’t wear those cartoon ones to your wedding, dear. These are neutral, they go with your suit.”

Phil pouts a little, glad the cameras have stopped rolling, and vows silently to wear the brightest socks he can find on his wedding day.

♡

With only two more weeks until the wedding, Dan feels like he needs to kick into gear with the preparations.

Step one: get a haircut.

He won’t tell his hairdresser, but he’s deliberately getting his hair cut a little in advance, just in case anything goes wrong. Two weeks should be enough to buy a wig somewhere, right?

Dan is glad he decided to embrace the curls a couple of years ago. They require a lot less maintenance compared to the perfectly straightened fringe he used to have and that would never quite sit right. It’d be just his luck to arrive at his own wedding with frizzy hair.

In the beginning, Dan would watch Fabrice like a hawk as he cut his hair, so scared for the curls to look bad. By now, he trusts the man not to mess up, so he spends most of his appointments on his phone, scrolling through the depths of Twitter.

Fabrice is used to it by now, just chats with the other customers and pulls Dan’s hair when he slouches down too much. It’s a system that works.

Though maybe not today. “So, I heard you’re getting married soon,” Fabrice says casually.

Dan’s head shoots up and Fabrice quickly reaches out to steady him before he impales himself on a pair of scissors. “Woah, almost lost your ear there,” he warns.

“Sorry,” Dan apologises distractedly. “Who told you?”

Fabrice presses his lips together and makes a turning key gesture. “Salon secret.”

Dan rolls his eyes. “Was it Bryony?” His friend attended the women’s salon that was housed in the same building. Fabrice would sometimes help out there when it was particularly busy, and so the two had met. Dan had always suspected they gossiped about him, but he’d never been able to solidify his accusations, until now.

Fabrice’s silence is all the answer he needs. “How unprofessional of you,” Dan mumbles, biting back a smile.

“It’s true then? You’re getting married?”

Dan hums non-committedly.

“I’m gonna give you your emo fringe back,” Fabrice threatens.

“You wouldn’t dare!” Dan exclaims, covering his head with both his hands just in case.

“Come on, Dan, give me something here.”

Defeated, Dan lets out a long, suffering sigh. “It’s true. Whatever Bryony told you is true. I’m getting married.”

“Tone down that excitement, boy,” Fabrice says deadpan.

The thought creeps up on Dan that maybe Fabrice isn’t as in the loop as he thought. Maybe Bryony hadn’t said _that_ much. He decides to ask Fabrice.

“She barely said anything, just that you were getting married soon. She wouldn’t even tell me the lucky guy’s name. What’s he called, Dan? Does he come to this salon as well?”

“Eh, no, he doesn’t go here.” Dan coughs. “Are you almost done? I forgot I’ve got-” he racks his brain for a believable excuse, “a parcel I need to pick up. On the other side of town. You know how UPS is.” He lets out a forced laugh.

If Fabrice doesn’t buy his little white lie, he doesn’t show it. Dan makes a mental note to make up for his behaviour by telling Fabrice everything he wants to know during his next appointment.

Maybe he’ll wait a good six months for another haircut though. Long hair is coming back in style, isn’t it?

Dan actually does have an errand to run, though it’s not the parcel he told Fabrice about.

For the party after the ceremony, Dan has told the _Married At First Sight_ wedding planner that he wants dramatic flower arrangements scattered throughout the room. He knows he wants white lilies and dark-coloured tulips, but he’s not too sure about the rest of the flowers in the bouquets, so he wants to hop into a local florist and take a look at their offerings.

Dan wouldn’t call himself a flower connoisseur, but he is a perfectionist, so he’s spent all of last night looking up the meanings of different types of flowers. He’s not shy to a little cynicism, but even he wants to avoid accidentally including a sinister flower like begonias. Who knew those little ones could radiate _beware_?

He’s never been to this particular florist and has no idea what to expect, but as soon as he catches sight of the young woman in denim dungarees watering plants near the back of the store, he feels confident that they’ll be able to find some nice things.

In the end, he settles for white lilies and clematis combined with deep purple tulips and irises for the big centrepieces, lilac lavender for more subtle floral touches, and stephanotis to wear on his blazer, as it symbolises good luck. He’ll definitely be able to use that.

When he gets home, Dan quickly sends off the email to the wedding planner, listing the flowers and their meanings.

It’s the last task he got to have input on. The invitations have been sent out for weeks now, with most guests confirming their attendance, the wedding cake has been ordered (vanilla cake with red fruits and chocolate sprinkles in the middle, which had apparently been a perfect match with his partner – at least that’s one thing they’ve got in common), and the song for their first dance has been chosen (by his soon-to-be-husband, whom Dan can only hope has good taste).

There is nothing left for Dan but to wait now, and waiting means worrying. He really, _really_ hopes the team of experts knows what they’re doing, because Dan doesn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story is about to kick off for real now!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The big day!!

Dan wakes long before the birds do and spends an hour lying in bed, trying all the different relaxation and breathing techniques he learnt in his yoga class. They do nothing to soothe the nerves in his stomach, and his heart rate feels even higher afterwards.

Today could turn out to be the best day of his life, the start of a wonderful new era, but staring at himself in the mirror, Dan mostly just feels like throwing up. The faint blue light of the TL lamp on the ceiling makes the circles around his eyes look even darker than they are, and his hair sticks out in all the wrong places. Bryony is going to have to work her magic a bit extra.

The doorbell rings as Dan is forcing himself to at least eat half a bowl of cereal. It tastes like wet cardboard.

Bryony walks into the flat carrying a bag that she throws on the table. “Power food,” she declares. “Chocolate croissants.”

Dan’s stomach flips and he moans pathetically. “I’ll puke.”

Bryony lifts her eyebrows as she bites into a croissant. “Is it that bad?”

“The worst.” Dan sighs. “Do you think I can drop out still?”

“If you wanna pay like a million pounds in fine.”

The production house had him sign a hefty contract with all sorts of clauses and agreements about his involvement in the show. Dan wasn’t allowed to talk about the outcome of the marriage, wasn’t allowed to post any pictures on social media until the programme aired, he could absolutely not be on any dating apps or websites for the duration of the programme, and most importantly, any contract breaches would be fined for a substantial amount of money.

It didn’t sound too bad at the time he put his signature, but he hadn’t had a clue how emotionally challenged he would feel on his wedding day. He wonders if other couples, normal ones, feel this way, too. If so, he definitely understands why so many people get divorced nowadays.

Bryony makes quick work of camouflaging the lack of sleep under Dan’s eyes and when the television crew arrives, Helen is clearly taken aback at how fresh-faced he looks. She doesn’t even bother to hide her surprise.

“Hi, Dan, you look a lot less like death than we’re used to from our participants!”

Dan laughs. “Good morning to you, too.” He doesn’t reveal his beauty secret, though the cameras will probably be able to pick up on the slightly powdery skin. Quite frankly, he doesn’t care what anyone thinks about men wearing makeup.

Dan leads the team into his small flat and gestures towards Bryony. “That’s Bryony. She went suit shopping with me.”

Helen nods in recognition, greeting the other woman.

“So, are you ready?”

Dan notices Helen has slipped into producer mode, and the camera being pointed at his face is a firm reminder of what is about to happen in just a few hours.

“At the moment, I’m beyond nervous. It’s very strange to wake up on one of the most important days of your life and not knowing who’s going to be standing in front of you. I just hope he doesn’t run for the hills when he sees me,” Dan jokes, though there is an edge of seriousness to his voice.

“I’m so curious to see who they picked for you,” Bryony chimes in. “You get along with different types of people, but when it comes to dating, you’re way pickier.”

Dan lightly shoves her shoulder. “You make it sound like I think nobody is good enough for me.”

“That’s now what I’m saying! I’m just saying it’ll be interesting if you immediately click with your husband.”

“I think I should be more scared about him not liking me than the other way around, to be honest.”

Bryony tuts. “You can be very charming when you want to be. It’ll be fine.”

She’s right. Dan is a people-pleaser, always able to flutter his eyelashes and get his way even with people he doesn’t know. Or rather, _especially_ with people he doesn’t know. He wouldn’t call himself a manipulator, but the truth is that most people are very easy to guide, and Dan uses his boyish charm to his advantage when he sees fit.

If he were less of an anti-social nerd, he would have probably been very successful as a manager in some renowned company. As it is, he’s more than happy to use his skills for good.

With the help of some hairspray, Dan’s curls don’t put up too much of a fight, and after some last-minute ironing, Dan is fully suited up and ready for his wedding. Practically ready, that is, because although the nerves have subsided a little, he’s still jittery, pent up with anxious excitement.

The vows he’s written are folded up neatly, tucked away in the inner pocked of his jacket. Dan has to resist the urge to take them out and rewrite the whole thing.

In the car on the way to the venue, he fiddles with his blazer button so much he worries it’ll come off. He clasps his hands together instead, feeling bare skin where a ring will soon sit, possibly for the rest of his life.

♡

Phil’s mum is waiting for him when he gets out of the car, her eyes tearing up before she’s even had a proper look.

“You’re the most handsome groom I’ve seen since I married your father,” she whispers lovingly, straightening out his tie.

His brother pats him on the back. “Good luck, bro. Remember, blink three times fast if you need us to intervene. Cornelia has been practising her fainting skills.”

“Martin!” their mother scowls.

“Sorry, mum.” Martin laughs before heading inside.

It’s just Phil and his mum now. And the camera crew, but he’s trying very hard to forget they exist.

Phil takes a deep breath, and then another one, and links arms with his mother. It’s time. He’s about to be a changed man. A _married_ man.

The corridor is long, their footsteps echoing off the walls, and Phil tries to focus on placing one feet in front of the other instead of imagining what – or rather, who – is waiting for him behind the dark wood doors that loom in front of them. Paintings of past mayors line the walls, and Phil is sure at least two of them glare at him disapprovingly.

“Mum,” he says when they stop a few metres away from the door, scrambling for an excuse to keep her with him just a little longer.

“Child,” she replies, voice soothing. She places her hand on his arm, sensing his nerves. “You’ll be okay. All you’ve got to do is say yes.”

A squeeze to his arm, a kiss on his cheek, and she’s gone.

For a few brief seconds, the noise inside drifts out through the open door, and then it’s quiet, and Phil is alone.

He focuses on keeping his breathing steady, counts eight seconds in and twelve out. His palms are sweaty, and he wipes them on his trousers, hoping the cameras didn’t catch it.

The producer counts him down on her fingers. On zero, his hand reaches out for the doorknob, twisting it.

He sees people turn their heads, vaguely notices the flower arrangements before his gaze settles on the man that’s walking in from the other side. They’d agreed to not go the traditional way of having one person wait for the other, neither of them keen on reinforcing stereotypes. At least it’s one thing they have in common.

His soon-to-be husband is wearing an all-white suit, black shirt contrasting sharply with the fair skin of his neck. Phil can’t help but appreciate how well their outfits complement each other, how surprisingly traditional their wedding photos will be despite them not being a traditional couple.

Phil knows he certainly wouldn’t be able to pull off a white suit, but he’s glad this man has the confidence. Even his shoes are white, and Phil silently admires him for his bravery. If it were him, he’d have stepped into a puddle the minute he left the car.

Phil’s eyes travel up, meeting those of his scientific soulmate, and they both smile, relief imminent in their features. At least this first impression is a positive one.

When they reach the front of the room, Phil feels panic rise up in his throat again, unsure of how to greet this virtual stranger, but the man places a hand on his arms and kisses his cheek, just a graze of his lips.

“I’m Dan,” he says as he pulls back, crossing his hands in front of him.

“Phil.” He sneaks a glance at his family, nodding almost invisibly. No need for Cornelia to carry out her fainting trick. He doesn’t want to run away.

(Or at least, not yet. Dan could still be a cannibal. He’ll have to check before they’re alone in their hotel room tonight.)

Despite it being his own ceremony, Phil finds himself zoning out once the wedding registrar welcomes the guests and starts a talk about the joys of marriage. He vaguely hears Dan being described as an advocate for mental health with a love for music and a fear of spiders, which makes Phil smile. With the limited knowledge he has, it’s hard to picture Dan to be afraid of anything.

Phil supresses a grimace when the registrar sketches him as a creative butterfly who edits films during the day and enjoys both board games and video games at night. Although it is the truth, it makes him sound nerdier than he’d like. He doesn’t think of himself as having a very interesting personality, but this description makes him sound even more bland and generic than he really is.

Dan shoots him a smile, and Phil can’t help but mirror it. He hadn’t realised until now, but Dan’s got a dimple on only one side of his face, adding to his boyish look.

He’s shocked into reality again when the registrar speaks his name: “Philip Michael Lester, please say the following words after me.”

Phil swallows, notices how his hands shake slightly, how Dan’s pink trembles as they hold hands. “ _Daniel James Howell_ ,” he repeats. “ _I give you this ring as a sign of our marriage and I call upon these persons here present to witness that I, Philip Michael Lester, do take thee, Daniel James Howell, to be my lawful wedded husband._ ” He manages to not let his voice break once during the entire phrase.

He slides the ring onto Dan’s finger, movement smooth. Phil can see the smile on his lips. He’s not sure about Dan’s stance, but Phil wouldn’t mind getting a feel of those lips in a minute.

“Daniel James Howell,” the registrant says.

Dan barely waits to finish speaking before he’s fumbling to slide the ring on. It falters on Phil’s knuckle and Phil chuckles softly. “Here I was, thinking I’d be the clumsy one in this relationship,” he mutters so softly only Dan can pick up on it.

He says it gently, teasingly, and Dan’s eyes glitter when he replies, “I’ve got five weeks to prove you wrong.”

They lock eyes, and Dan’s eyes reflect Phil’s questioning ones. To kiss or not to kiss?

They move simultaneously, one of Dan’s hands coming to rest on Phil’s waist, Phil’s own hands finding their way to his shoulders. Their lips touch, lingering slightly, not the short peck Phil was expecting, though it’s still fleeting.

Dan tastes like mint and strawberry and something else Phil can’t quite place. He doesn’t have the chance to identify it before they part, and he misses the touch as soon as they part.

Judging by the blush on Dan’s cheeks, he didn’t mind that first kiss, either.

It should feel unsettling, how easy it is to gauge Dan’s reactions less than an hour into their match, but instead it only feels _right_. Phil can’t wait to get to know Dan for real, learn his quirks and see his unfiltered self. He has a feeling it might be even better than this done up version of Dan.

♡

The attendants give the newly wed couple a loud round of applause when they leave the room, and the cheering dies down only when the door falls shut.

Dan breathes out a big sigh of relief at the same time that Phil does and they both burst out laughing.

“That was something else,” Dan says. He can’t put his feelings into proper words yet, can barely grasp that he went from long-term bachelor to married man in the space of an hour.

“It was. Wow,” Phil agrees.

They stare at each other with wide grins for a few seconds, just taking each other in.

“You look really good,” he tells Phil.

“So do you. The white is cool, I didn’t expect that at all.” Phil lifts his hand to look at the ring on his finger, twisting it so it shimmers in the light.

Dan’s cheeks are starting to cramp from smiling so much, but he feels like he might never be able to stop anymore. He reaches out for Phil’s hand, admiring the band of gold that’s now tying them together. Dan didn’t think he’d feel this at ease already, but the adrenalin pumping through his veins makes him brave and he surprises himself when he says, “Do a twirl.”

Phil complies easily, turning on his heels and then almost losing his balance. Dan steadies him with a hand around his elbow and Phil leans into his side, giving him a half hug. His mouth is close to Dan’s ear when he whispers, “Did you just want to see my ass?” and Dan doesn’t know if the shiver that runs through his body is a reaction to Phil’s boldness or his physical proximity.

He shrugs innocently. “What if I did?” he murmurs.

Phil raises an eyebrow. “Your turn now,” he says in lieu of replying.

Dan listens dutifully, turning around his axis and ending with a reverence, looking up at Phil through his eyelashes. “We’re even now.”

He wants to say more, wants to compliment Phil on the rainbow socks he’s only just spotted and ask about Phil’s editing career and discuss video games with him, but there are so many thought tumbling around in his brain that he struggles to voice any of them.

They head outside when Helen tells them to, walking to the car through the crowd of family and friends showering them with flower petals.

Dan’s grandma actually arranged the car. Apparently, she’s the kind of person to be friends with someone who owns a vintage white Rolls Royce. Dan doesn’t deem himself cool enough to even sit in the car as a passenger.

Phil whistles through his teeth when he spots the car. “Fancy,” he says. “A Royce. I’ve heard they used to be hand-painted back in the days.”

The driver holds the door open for them and Dan gets in first, not wanting to make it seem like he can’t stop ogling Phil’s butt. Dan fastens his seatbelt as Phil gets in and waits for the other man to do the same before he speaks up.

“Did you just make that up?”

“Hm?” Phil hums, running a hand through his hair.

“About the car.” Dan glances at him sideways, a soft smile on his face.

“Maybe,” Phil admits. He turns his head, too, so they’re staring at each other.

“Why?” Dan wants to know.

Phil shrugs, averting his gaze to look out to the road. “Don’t know. Maybe you’re the kind of guy to be really into cars.”

Dan has to fight back a snort. He’s got a driver’s license he hasn’t used in years, and he doesn’t have a car, let alone any knowledge of any car ever. “Are _you_ into cars?”

“Do I give you the impression that I’m into cars?” He sounds offended, and Dan thinks he doesn’t have the right to be so unintentionally adorable.

“No, Phil, you do not. Neither do I. You see? It’s a perfect match.”

Phil laughs and leans his head on Dan’s shoulder. It doesn’t feel as weird as it should.

“Off to a good start,” he says, so softly Dan isn’t sure the mics will be able to pick up on it.

He nods, linking their hands together. Phil lets him.

They don’t say much after that. It’s nice to not have a producer in the car with them who prompts them with questions, and when they arrive at the photoshoot location, Dan’s heart doesn’t feel like it’s going to jump out of his chest anymore.

They’re being awaited by Laura, a woman their age who is going to take the pictures. She tells them she doesn’t want to have them stiffly posing, but would rather they try to go for spontaneity and do what comes naturally.

Besides him, Phil groans at those words. Dan nudges him with his elbow. “Come on, it’ll be fun.”

It’s a little stiff at first, neither of them knowing where to put their hands or where to look, but Laura is nothing if not patient, and with gentle coaxing, both Dan and Phil start to lose the tension in their bodies.

Before long, they’re chasing each other around and kicking up leaves up at each other. Dan jumps on Phil’s back, locking his legs around Phil’s waist, and they get some nice shots before Phil tries to buck him off and they both land on the grass, laughs echoing in the air.

Even Laura is struggling to hold her camera steady as she snaps away.

She makes Dan sit against a tree with Phil between his legs, looking up at him while Phil looks down, and it’s slightly awkward until Dan discovers he can make Phil smile with his tongue between his teeth when he tells him all the colours he can see in his strikingly blue eyes.

He starts with the classics, ocean blue and sky blue and sapphire blue, then moves to Paddington Bear’s coat blue and plastic bag blue and blue screen of death blue. When Laura tells them they can get back up again, he quickly whispers “blue balls blue” in Phil’s ear, delighted at the way the tips of Phil’s ears go pink. He hopes Laura caught it.

The photoshoot seems to go on forever, pictures by the lake, by the car, walking down a path, looking each other in the eyes, sitting on a pile of logs, holding hands.

They end with a kissing shot, per Laura’s request. While their first kiss had come naturally, this is one is messy. Dan can’t find a good place to put his hands and he can feel Phil’s hovering over his body, too, not quite touching. When their lips meet, it doesn’t spark electricity, and Dan has to supress the worrying thought that maybe they aren’t as compatible as they briefly believed.

Phil is the first to break the kiss and Dan hopes he doesn’t see the disappointment on his face, but then their eyes lock and Phil has the same pensive look on his face, and they both burst out laughing.

“That’s a picture we won’t frame,” Phil grins.

Dan can’t help but swoon at his casual use of _we_.

♡

The old farmhouse where the wedding reception is hosted looks incredible as dusk settles and thousands of string lights light up the gorgeous wood beams in the roof. Dan’s careful selection of flowers brings a touch of elegance to the room without being tacky, and they’ve only known each other for half a day, but Phil already envies how Dan can bring his creative visions to life. Though Phil would consider himself creative, too, he lacks the patience and the fine motor skills to execute them as finely detailed as he would like.

The guests seem to be enjoying themselves, talking in small groups with a drink in their hands as Dan and Phil make their way round trying to talk to all of them and introducing each other to their respective friends and family.

They’re standing with Phil’s family now, his parents, Nigel and Kathryn (“call me Kath”), his brother Martin and his girlfriend Cornelia, and his aunt Judith. The introduction was warm and hearty, and Phil got distracted telling his brother about the photoshoot until he realised Dan was now surrendered to Kath. He’s just about to step in and save him from Kath’s inquisitive questioning, when he realises they are actually having a proper conversation.

About _knitting_ , of all things.

“I made myself a jumper last winter,” Dan tells Kath, “you know, all of the different pieces – sleeves, front panel, back panel. And then I wanted to assemble the whole thing properly, but I just couldn’t figure it out. I watched hours of videos on YouTube, but to no avail. It’s still a disassembled mess somewhere at the bottom of my wardrobe.”

“Oh, poor thing,” Kath coos. “I can give you a lesson if you want. I used to knit for my boys all the time when they were little. They both grew so tall, though, it takes forever to make them anything nowadays.”

“You don’t have to knit me anything, mum,” Phil interrupts, hoping to avoid a knitted Christmas surprise. “Your jumpers are really itchy anyway,” he adds teasingly.

His mum gasps and clicks her tongue. “Philip Michael, behave. It’s your own wedding, for God’s sake.”

Dan laughs at him being scolded. “No worries, Kath, you don’t need to waste your precious yarn on him. I’m happy to replace Phil as your knitting model.”

“Oi,” Phil scowls, “stop trying to work me out of my own family, Howell.”

“Oi,” Dan echoes with a grin. “I can’t help that you don’t appreciate your mum’s knitting skills.”

“Whatever,” Phil grumbles. He takes Dan’s hand, not so subtly pulling him away from his family. “Let’s go see your family. You haven’t introduced me properly yet.”

Dan mutters something under his breath.

“What?” Phil asks.

Shaking his head, Dan scans the room for this family. “Nothing. Just…” He sighs. “It’s complicated. My family and I. So if they say anything that makes you uncomfortable, just – I don’t know, squeeze my hand or something.”

It sounds cryptic, but Phil doesn’t want to pry, so he just nods.

The venue isn’t that large, so Dan spots his family easily enough, but he seems to drag his feet as they make their way over, which is so far from the confidence he’s been radiating for the better part of the evening that it throws Phil off-kilter a bit.

They reach a small group of people that are introduced as Dan’s mother, brother, and grandmother. They greet Phil warmly, congratulating the both of them, and it confuses Phil even more. There seems to be nothing wrong with Dan’s family. Dan’s mum hugs him, and his grandmother kisses his cheek, and Phil can’t detect a hint of awkwardness.

Until Dan asks his mum: “So he didn’t come?” when his grandmother compliments Phil on his shoes, and Phil pricks his ears while trying to keep up his own conversation.

Dan’s mum replies in a soft voice, too quiet for Phil to make out, and he files his questions away. He doesn’t think tonight is the best moment to be having a conversation about what clearly seems to be a sensitive subject to Dan, if the tense expression on his face is anything to go by.

They don’t stick with Dan’s family for long, Dan subtly leading him away with the excuse that they have other guests to tend to.

It’s a whirlwind of faces and names Phil forgets as soon as he hears them, and he’s strangely relieved when Dan and he are called to the dancefloor for their first dance. At least he can focus on one face for a bit, and a very lovely one at that.

They dance to one of Phil’s favourites, a soft-sung piano adaptation of Bliss by Muse. Or rather, they sway. Neither of them feels the need to try any complicated dance moves, content to just stay wrapped in each other. The rest of the world fades into a blur as Phil looks at Dan, this man he didn’t even know existed until this morning, and now they’re having their first dance as a married couple, and Phil can’t remember the last time he met anyone that made him feel even remotely this way.

Maybe it’s the lack of sleep, maybe it’s the adrenalin, maybe it’s wishful thinking.

And maybe… Maybe it’s Dan.

Time will tell. Their five weeks start now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They're officially husbands now, ahhh


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the love so far, I'm so happy you like this <3

It’s long past midnight when the television crew finally leaves the two of them alone after filming their reactions to the hotel room they’ll spend their wedding night in.

Phil lets himself fall on the bed, his head landing right on the pillow. He’s been running on adrenalin for most of the day, but the day’s events are catching up to him, and he only now realises exhaustion has settled deep in his bones. The thought of having to walk the five steps to the bathroom seems like a superhuman expedition.

Dan stands in the corner of the room, looking out of the floor-to-ceiling window that is supposedly overlooking English countryside. In the dark of the night, all Phil sees is the faint shimmer of stars in the open spaces between the ink black clouds. He takes a moment to admire Dan’s white silhouette against the dark world outside, his eyes freely roaming the broad expanse of Dan’s shoulders and the length of his legs.

He doesn’t avert his gaze when Dan turns around, locking eyes with him.

Dan’s eyes flit around, seemingly searching Phil’s face, though Phil doesn’t know what he’s looking for. Then the corners of Dan’s mouth curl up and he walks towards the bed, standing at Phil’s feet.

Phil props himself up on his elbows.

“Not to sound like a cliché,” Dan says softly, “but today truly felt like a dream.”

His voice sounds sincere, but there’s a hint of something else in it, too. Phil recognises it as sadness, though he doesn’t quite understand.

Dan’s hand reaches out to pluck at one of Phil’s shoelaces, loosening it slightly. “And if it was a dream,” Dan continues, “I don’t want to go to sleep and have you disappear in the morning.”

Phil sits upright, crossing his legs under him. In his head, he can see his mum shake her head at him for putting his shoes on the sheets.

“I’ll still be here in the morning,” Phil mumbles. He wants to say more, but the words get stuck in his throat, and he thinks Dan understands, anyway. There’s a connection between them that feels too intense for the time they’ve known each other.

Dan nods, but he doesn’t meet Phil’s gaze and he doesn’t smile. Phil isn’t sure how they went from electric happiness to this strange melancholy for something that hasn’t happened yet. On his knees, he walks to the edge of the bed and then stands in the small space between Dan and the bed. Dan’s eyes widen ever so slightly, and Phil wraps his arms around his waist before he can overthink.

For a split second, Dan’s body tenses up, but before Phil can get worried, he hugs back, hooking his chin over Phil’s shoulder.

They stand wrapped up in each other long enough that Phil loses all notion of time. When Dan loosens his grip, Phil does so, too, smiling softly. “For whatever it’s worth, I’m really looking forward to our time together.”

Dan smiles in return. “Me, too.”

Phil’s eyes flick down towards Dan’s lips, but he doesn’t want to push the other man when he’s clearly in a vulnerable state already, so he forces himself to step out of the embrace and make his way to the bathroom.

The face that looks back at him in the mirror is the same as it was this morning, but nonetheless, Phil barely recognises himself. He feels like he’s lived a year in a day, half expecting to spot a grey hair in his quiff.

Never in a million years would he have expected to marry a stranger, and now that he did, he can’t remember what he was so nervous for.

Sure, it’s odd he introduced Dan to his family before he even knew his favourite colour, and it’s weird that they’re going to have their first date on their honeymoon, and it’s scary to think that despite his current optimism, they might not be a match after all, but there is something about Dan that makes Phil confident that the next five weeks will undoubtedly be the biggest, most fun adventure he’s ever been on.

Phil spends entirely too long brushing his teeth, taking out his contacts and washing his face, taking advantage of being alone for the first time in nearly twenty-four hours. Standing under the hot stream of water in the shower feels nothing short of heavenly and he massages his scalp with shampoo until the suds cover every inch of his head.

He almost forgets he’s not actually alone, but then Dan raps his fingers against the door in quick succession and says, “Are you trying to wash yourself down the drain or something?”

Phil can hear the smile in his voice, and it shouldn’t make his heart jump the way it does. He laughs and calls out “Sorry!” before quickly towelling himself dry, slipping into his pyjamas. The shirt sticks to his still slightly damp skin and he suddenly doubts his trousers choice, but he’s not going to back out now.

Walking out into the room, he finds Dan sitting against the headboard, scrolling through his phone. He doesn’t look up at the sound of Phil closing the bathroom door, so Phil thinks he can just quickly slip under the covers and go to sleep, but then Dan _does_ look up and immediately bursts out laughing.

Phil’s cheeks don’t flush like they normally do when he’s being laughed at, but maybe that’s because Dan’s laugh doesn’t sound mean, just rather surprised.

Still, Phil doesn’t waste time getting under the duvet, elbowing Dan’s side when he doesn’t stop laughing.

“Sorry,” Dan wheezes. “But what the fuck, Phil?”

“What?” Phil grumbles. He refuses to let himself be criticised for wearing emoji pyjamas.

Dan’s laughing fit slowly comes to a stop and he rubs the tears out of his eyes. “Nothing.” He smiles, shaking his head. “I feel like I should have seen this coming. I don’t know why I’m surprised.”

“You’re jealous,” Phil accuses him with a yawn.

Dan snorts. “Very jealous,” he agrees, too easily. “Night, Phil.”

“Good night.” Phil hears Dan patter to the bathroom, and it takes all of his remaining energy to find his voice again when he says, “You’re not the worst person to be married to, you know.”

He’s halfway asleep already when Dan replies something that sounds like “neither are you”.

♡

The sound of children running down the hotel corridor wakes Dan earlier than he would have liked, but before his mood can turn sour, he catches sight of Phil’s horrendous yellow pyjama bottoms and he can’t stop a smile from taking over his face. He can’t believe the so-called experts married him off to a guy who wears emoji trousers unironically.

He jumps in the shower so he’ll look presentable when the television crew arrives, and right as he slips on a fresh T-shirt, he hears three soft knocks on the door. He doesn’t hear Phil get up from the bed, so he runs his fingers through his hair to somewhat style his curls and opens the door.

“Phil’s not awake yet,” he says quietly, glancing back at the man that’s still sound asleep in the hotel bed.

Helen nods and the team takes position in the room in surprising silence. There’s a moment where Dan just stands at the door, looking at the scene from an outside perspective, and wondering when his life ended up like this. Then he shakes his head, tiny droplets of water landing on his shoulders and back, and plops down onto the mattress again.

The movement makes Phil stir, though it takes him another minute of tossing and turning and yawning before he eventually opens his eyes. Dan watches in amusement as Phil stares up at the ceiling first, seemingly not realising his exact surroundings, before his gaze settles on Dan and his eyes widen slightly, his mouth falling open in a silent _oh_.

“Good morning,” Dan greets him softly.

“Morning.” Phil’s voice still sounds scratchy with sleep and it makes something deep inside Dan’s stomach stir. He pushes the feeling away.

“Breakfast is going to be here soon,” he tells Phil, and as if on cue, there’s another series of knocks on the door and a voice calling out, “Room service!”

“Will you get the door?” Dan asks with a smirk, laughing when Phil smashes a pillow on his head. From the corner of his eyes, he can see the questioning looks on the faces of the crew, but he doesn’t care to explain. They’ll understand when Phil inevitably has to get up to get dressed.

Breakfast consists of everything good in this world and Dan barely catches himself before he moans out loud at the sight of perfectly poached eggs on golden-brown toast, chocolate croissants, and a colourful fruit salad on the side. Getting married is worth it for the after-wedding breakfast alone.

Judging by the grabby hands Phil makes at the tray, he’s as enthusiast as Dan is. Phil throws back the blankets to clear space for Dan to put the tray, and Dan can hear the tv crew stifling their laughter as they catch sight of Phil’s pyjamas. He bites his bottom lip to stop himself from laughing, too.

Phil’s cheeks are slightly rosy, but he rolls his eyes at Dan with a smile, so he doesn’t seem to mind being judged for his fashion choices too much.

It’s a shame they have a flight to catch, because Dan would be more than happy to stay in bed with Phil and a constant supply of amazing food.

They discuss possible honeymoon destinations, dreaming of safaris in Kenya and mountains in Peru, but accepting they’ll probably end up in Greece (Dan’s choice) or Italy (Phil’s preference). Both of them agree they don’t want to be sent to France – Dan because he very strongly disliked his French teacher in school, and Phil because he doesn’t want to eat snails.

As they reminisce about their wedding day, they laugh about their nerves and how none of the horror scenarios they’d imagined turned out to be true.

“I was so relieved when I walked in and you weren’t some sixty-year-old man,” Dan admits.

Phil laughs, throwing his head back. Dan gets momentarily distracted by the long lines of his neck and the jutted-out shape of his Adam’s apple.

“Did you think they were going to match you to a sugar daddy?” Phil probes, still laughing, and Dan shrugs helplessly.

“I don’t know, maybe?”

Phil tilts his head, studying him. Dan can feel the blood rush to his cheeks, and Phil narrows his eyes at that. “Why would you be worried about that?”

“No reason,” Dan hurries to say. “Anyway, who did you expect to be matched to?”

His attempt at changing the subject is futile, because Phil doesn’t answer. Instead, he looks at Dan like he can read his deepest, darkest secrets in his eyes, and Dan squirms. Phil is too curious for his own good, that much is clear already.

All of a sudden, Phil gasps. “Oh!”

“What?” Dan asks unwillingly.

Phil glances sideways at the camera, then whispers, “Have you got a daddy kink?”

Dan wishes for the earth to swallow him whole.

His cheeks are on fire now and he nearly shouts, “No!”

Phil seems taken aback, mumbling an apology, and Dan pinches the bridge of his nose. “Sorry. But Jesus. It’s not a daddy kink.”

“Okay…” Phil says, drawing out the last syllable.

“Just that maybe I said in one of the interviews that I like older guys,” Dan rushes out in one breath. He makes a mental note to talk to Helen after this conversation is over so it can be cut from the footage. He doesn’t want this to become common knowledge.

“How much older?”

And okay, Phil really is not dropping the subject, is he?

“A few years. Nothing extreme.” Now doesn’t seem like the time to bring up that he’s set his Tinder age range to a maximum of forty-five. If all goes well, he’s going to delete his Tinder soon, anyway.

“How old are you?”

Dan laughs. Of all the things they talked about since they met, their age has not come up in conversation once, but he does know the names of half of Phil’s primary school friends.

“Twenty-six.”

That seems to catch Phil by surprise, but he doesn’t comment on it. “I’m thirty. Is a four-year age gap enough to satisfy your needs?” He’s smiling in that typical way of his, his tongue slightly sticking out between his teeth. Dan’s already learnt he mostly does it when he’s poking fun at someone.

“Perfect, thank you very much.” He lets out a deep breath. “Let’s switch to a different topic before I actually die of embarrassment.”

♡

After a two-hour flight on a too-small plane, they make it to Portugal. Despite it being autumn, a gush of warm air hits them square in the face when they step out of the plane. Phil stretches his arms above his head and moves from side to side, hearing his back crack concerningly. His body clearly is not meant for such cramped spaces.

Next to him, Dan shakes his legs out. He, too, complained about the tiny seats, but he had had it even worse than Phil as the person sitting in front of him had reclined their chair as soon as they’d been in the air, effectively trapping Dan for the rest of the flight.

They spend half an hour waiting for their luggage to arrive on the carrousel, and then another half hour at the rental car company, before they are all set to drive to their residence. It’s about an hour away from the airport and according to Helen, they will be driving through one of the most beautiful regions of Portugal.

Apparently, ‘the most beautiful region of Portugal’ is situated in a hilly part of the country. Each bend is almost directly followed by another and they keep going up and down. Phil has had to clear his ears three times in the past fifteen minutes alone, and his stomach isn’t a fan of the winding roads. He hopes he won’t get properly carsick.

Meanwhile, Dan seems to be having no issues whatsoever. He’s got both hands loosely resting on the steering wheel, nodding his head to the obscure Portuguese music that’s playing at low volume through the speakers.

He looks entirely at ease driving a strange car on the roads of a strange country, and Phil’s got to admit he finds his casual confidence rather sexy. He keeps sneaking glances at Dan, who keeps his eyes on the road and doesn’t give the impression that he notices he’s being watched, until Phil sees the corner of his mouth twitch as he tries to hold back a smile.

Phil smiles at himself for being caught and turns his head to look out of the side window. The navigation tells them they’re nearing the house they’re going to be staying at, and indeed, after one last turn, the holiday villa looms in front of them.

The all-white exterior freshens up the otherwise slightly outdated look of the house, and the palm tree next to the driveway looks as if it could use some love and affection, but none of that matters because Phil spots a swimming pool the second he gets out of the car.

“We’ve got a pool!” he shouts excitedly at Dan.

The other man walks round to his side of the car, his eyes lighting up as the pool comes into view. “Fuck yes.” Dan laughs. “I love this place already.”

They decide to leave their luggage in the car for now, and Phil unlocks the front door to reveal a surprisingly big living room with adjoined kitchen looking out over the outdoor lounge area and swimming pool. There are two doors, one that leads to the toilet, and another one that leads to a small bedroom with two single beds. Up the stairs, there is a bigger bedroom with a double bed and a small balcony, as well as a spacious bathroom with both a shower and a bath.

With the camera crew in their wake, they stare at the bed for a few seconds. Though they’d slept next to each other at the previous hotel, it had simply been the only option, unless one of them would’ve slept on the ground. Here, it feels like a more conscious choice, since they do have a perfectly comfortable option to sleep separately.

Phil looks to his side to find Dan already looking at him.

“What do you wanna do?” Dan asks.

Phil shrugs. He doesn’t mind either way. “I mean, we’re married…” he says slowly.

Dan nods, glancing back and forth between Phil and the bed. “If we start sleeping separately, I don’t think we’ll go back to sleeping together anymore.”

“So…” Phil draws out the word. “This room?”

“Yep.” Dan smiles. “And whoever starts snoring first gets banned to the small bed in the downstairs room.”

“Won’t be me,” Phil huffs. His friends tell him he does a lot of weird stuff in his sleep, from hogging all the blankets to talking and sleepwalking, but he’s never been accused of snoring, and he doubts he’ll start doing it now.

Dan raises his eyebrows. “Won’t be me either.”

The words “ _so we’ll be sleeping together the whole time_ ” hang unspoken in the air.

It doesn’t take them long to unpack their suitcases, neat piles of clothing stacked next to each other in the simple wooden wardrobe. Phil knows that at least his stuff will be a mess come tomorrow, but for now, he can pretend to be a functional adult who does things like unpack instead of just pulling out new clothing of his suitcase as he needs it.

♡

The sun is shining bright for October, a slight breeze stopping the air from feeling too sticky.

Dan’s in his swimming shorts and T-shirt, dozing off in the afternoon sun on one of the lounge beds by the pool. He feels perfectly content to stay there, and he could probably go for a real nap if he weren’t intently watching Phil through half-hooded eyelids.

His husband (he’s trying to ease himself into calling him that, but at the moment, even thinking the word makes him shudder in a strange sort of cringe) is applying sunscreen to his own legs. Dan didn’t bother, the autumn sun gentle enough on his skin, but Phil’s fair complexion looks like even the English winter sun could turn it red.

It’s an interesting view, Phil’s slender fingers working their way up and down his long legs, the muscles supplely moving under his skin. There’s an elegance to his body that he lacks in his actual movements, a bit like a deer on ice. Dan smiles at his own analogy.

When Phil looks up, Dan doesn’t bother to pretend like he wasn’t looking. Phil walks towards the lounge bed, throws the bottle of sunscreen at Dan and sits down at the end of the bed.

“Will you do my back?” he asks.

Dan’s mouth goes momentarily dry and he nods. “Sure,” he says, voice scratchy. He’ll blame it on his almost-nap. He clears his throat and walks towards Phil on his knees, glad he’s already got his back facing towards him so he doesn’t see the way Dan’s hand trembles as he squeezes out a dollop of sunscreen onto Phil’s back.

Dan spreads the cream evenly across the wide expanse of Phil’s shoulders and Phil shivers lightly. Dan tells himself it’s obviously due to the coolness of the product – it’s got nothing to do with him.

He’s hyperaware of the camera that is trained on them, knows this is exactly the kind of stuff that the viewers at home will lap up greedily. He focuses on covering every square inch of Phil’s back, making sure not to linger anywhere, and he tries his best to ignore the way his fingers leave a trail of goose bumps across Phil’s sides. Good thing the camera can’t pick up on it due to the angle they’re being filmed from.

“There,” he says as soon as he’s done, wiping his sticky hands on his own legs.

“Thanks,” Phil says, glancing back at him with a smile. His shorts have ridden up on his thighs, revealing more of his milky skin, and Dan is glad Phil walks away before it gets too distracting. He feels like a teenager all over again, the smallest strip of skin stirring something deep inside his stomach.

He lies back down, though he doesn’t return to his hazy state. Instead, he watches as Phil slides into the water, yelping at the coldness of it and flailing his hands in the air before he takes a deep breath and submerges himself completely.

Dan thinks about jumping into the pool too, as the nippy water is apparently not so cold that it drives Phil out immediately, but he can’t get himself to move quite yet.

When Phil appears again, his already droopy quiff is completely gone, hair sticking flatly against his forehead. It reminds Dan of the emo fringe he used to have himself, not even all that long ago, and he thinks Phil would probably look really good with a fringe like that. Better than Dan at least, who used to be at a constant war with the curly nature of his hair.

“This feels amazing!” Phil calls out to Dan, stretching out his limbs so he’s floating on his back like a starfish.

It does look very inviting, and Dan sits up to strip himself from his T-shirt, mentally rolling his eyes when one of the cameras comes closer. Without giving Phil a warning, he gets a running start and jumps into the pool with a big splash.

He shakes his curls out like a dog when he emerges, laughing when he hears Phil shriek at being attacked by water droplets for the second time in as many seconds.

“Hi.” Dan grins at him.

“Hi,” Phil echoes, pushing his wet hair out of his face. The blue of the water makes his eyes pop even more, the shimmering from the sun catching on the waves and reflecting in his eyes.

Dan sighs in content and kicks his legs up so he’s floating. “You were right, this is perfect.”

Phil hums. Dan hears him move his hands through the water.

“We should go to the beach tomorrow,” Phil suggests.

Dan turns his head to the side slightly so he can see him. “Yeah.”

“Could go for a proper swim.”

“I reckon it’ll be too cold, but we can try.” Dan moves his legs slightly to keep his lower body from sinking. “We should make some plans for the week, later. It’s so beautiful out here, we shouldn’t waste our entire trip at this pool.”

“I wouldn’t mind staying in here for days,” Phil muses, letting himself float again, too.

Dan raises his eyebrows, though he’s drifted away from Phil too far for him to see. “I’m starting to get a little chilly, actually.”

The wind that blows over the surfaces of the pool leaves the sparse hairs on his chest standing upright, and the sun is starting to disappear behind the clouds that are rolling in.

They don’t end up staying in the water for much longer.

Dan gets a fire going in the outdoor firepit after Phil finds a bag of marshmallows in the kitchen, and rather than dining out at one of the many restaurants in the nearby town, they get their hands sticky making s’mores, eating until they physically can’t anymore.

It’s not the kind of honeymoon Dan had pictured, but he loves it all the same.

♡

“Dan is easy to talk to,” Phil tells the camera as he’s setting the outdoor dining table for breakfast, “so it feels kind of strange that we’ve only known each other two days at this point.”

Helen had asked him to give them some thoughts on how he was liking his marriage so far. He doesn’t know what sort of quotes she’s looking for, so he just rambles a little. They can edit it later.

“I think it’s quite clear to both of us why we got matched together. There’s a lot of common ground between us.”

He hears Dan’s footsteps on the stairs and decides that’s his cue to stop talking. At least he didn’t have the chance to say something embarrassing, such as “ _it feels like fate_ ” or something equally cheesy.

“Morning,” Dan yawns, stretching his arms above his head. His T-shirt rides up slightly, revealing a soft strip of skin. He seems to have a slight tan line already, visible where his boxers sit low on his hips.

“Morning,” Phil greets him. He puts the breadbasket on the table and gestures towards the arrangement of food. “Breakfast is served.”

“Good. I’m starving.”

Phil laughs. “Same. Though I loved those s’mores for dinner, I feel like we should find a proper place to eat tonight.”

“Definitely,” Dan agrees. “You want tea or coffee?”

“Coffee, please. No milk, two sugars.”

Dan sticks his tongue out in what seems to be disgust. “Two?”

“Two,” Phil confirms.

Dan sighs, the corners of his eyes crinkling with a half-smile. “Okay, sure.”

“Are you judging me for my coffee habits?” Phil inquires.

“No,” Dan says in a tone that sounds like yes.

Phil shakes his head, sitting down at the table and letting out an overly dramatic sigh. “Here I was, telling the camera how well we get along, and now you’ve ruined it!” he calls out towards Dan in the kitchen.

“I’m so sorry!” he calls back. “I don’t think we can overcome this difference. Let’s sign those divorce papers already.”

Phil barks out a laugh. Helen looks slightly alarmed.

They probably shouldn’t joke about a divorce, Phil thinks, at least not this soon into their marriage, but he loves that it’s something they _can_ joke about. The last thing he wants is for him and Dan to tiptoe around each other because they’re afraid to scare the other person off.

The morning sun feels nice on his face, and Phil basks in it with closed eyes until he hears Dan put two cups on the table.

“Thank you,” Phil says.

Dan hums, grabbing a croissant from the basket. “I could get used to this.”

Phil goes for a chocolate croissant, biting into it with a satisfying crunch. “Don’t expect me to arrange breakfasts like this when we get home,” he warns Dan teasingly. “I live off cereals.”

Dan laughs, taking a bite from his croissant. He gets jam in the corner of his mouth, licking it off with his tongue. “Same.”

At this point, it shouldn’t surprise Phil as much anymore, how compatible they are even in those small details.

“Let’s enjoy it while it lasts.”

And they do, stretching their breakfast so long it basically becomes brunch. Phil’s stomach feels so full he fears it might explode if he even looks at food for another second, so he drags himself up to go take a shower while Dan tidies up.

They decide to drive to the ocean in the early afternoon. When Dan suggest Phil can drive if he wants to, Phil is quick to decline the offer.

“You _really_ don’t want me to get behind the wheel. It took me four tries to pass the exam and I haven’t driven in seven years,” he confesses.

Dan’s eyes go comically wide at that and he clutches the car keys a little firmer. “Right, never mind then.”

“I’m a good driver when it comes to Mario Kart, but that’s all.”

“Yeah, okay, let’s not recreate Mario Kart on these roads. They’re dangerous enough even without banana peels,” Dan jokes.

They drive in silence for a while, until Dan speaks up again. “So you’re decent at Mario Kart?”

“Decent? I’m ace, mate.”

Dan glances sideways with a smile. “Your northern is showing, _mate_.” He focuses on the road again. “I’m the uncrowned king of Mario. We should race some time.”

Phil huffs. He doesn’t doubt that Dan is a good player, but he clearly hasn’t seen Phil destroy every single one of his friends he ever played against. “You’re going down,” he promises.

“Am I, now?” Dan asks, clearly amused. “Can’t wait.”

The beach is near deserted when they arrive, only a mother and her child playing near the shoreline, and a person walking their dog in the far distance.

Though it’s a sunny day, a strong wind blows grains of sand against their legs in a rather painful manner. They quickly walk to the wet sand, where there is still wind, but no loose grains hitting their skin.

“You want to go for that swim still?” Dan calls out over the gushing of the waves.

Phil laughs, shaking his head. His enthusiasm from the day before had completely disappeared the second they parked the car. Despite the sunshine, the sea looks gloomy and grey and not at all inviting.

“Why do beach walks always look so romantic in films? Half the time, you end up being sandblasted by the wind or doused in rain.”

Dan nudges his side. “Newsflash: that’s how films work.”

In lieu of a smart response, Phil sticks his tongue out at him like the mature adult that he is. It’s easy to banter with Dan, much easier than it probably should be, and Phil is grateful that three days into their marriage, the awkwardness he’d feared for has not hit yet.

He knows there’s a big chance they will get to a point where they have to Talk About Their Feelings And Expectations, but for now, being around Dan is just fun and exciting in a way new things don’t often feel.

♡

The strong wind had cut their beach outing from the previous day short, so it’s only fair that they’re doing something properly active today, if only to give the television crew some more thrilling content.

Still, Dan can’t help but think maybe a stroll through a nearby village would’ve sufficed. They’re ten minutes into a two-and-a-half-hour hiking trail up the highest mountain of the Algarve region, and Phil has managed to stumble over loose rocks twice.

“Alright?” Dan asks when he sees Phil’s foot slip again, though he doesn’t stumble.

“Perfect,” Phil says, and he doesn’t even sound sarcastic.

Dan had offered to let Phil go in front on the narrow path so he could catch Phil if he fell (and maybe also to ogle his ass some more, but he wisely kept that to himself), but at this rate, it looks like his joking remark might actually become reality.

“We can do the other trail if you want,” he offers.

Phil glances back at him and Dan holds his breath, waiting to see if Phil’s level of balance complies with his bravery to take his eyes of his feet.

It does.

At least this time.

“I’m fine,” Phil assures him. “Just needed to get used to the rocks.”

“If you say so.” He goes silent for a few seconds, then bites back a grin as he adds, “I forgot to ask during the application process, but do you know how the legacy is arranged in case anything happens to either of us?”

Phil barks out a laugh. “Are you planning to push me off a cliff if I don’t crack my skull open on these rocks myself?” He looks back at Dan, eyes shimmering.

Dan shrugs in faux innocence.

“We’re not married in community of goods, so you can save yourself the hassle.”

“Noted.” Dan smiles, looking out over the landscape. It is beautiful, mountain sides covered in lush green and the sun high in the sky basking everything in golden rays.

There’s a layer of sweat starting to form on his back, and he can see the hairs at the nap of Phil’s neck going curly from the dampness, too.

They walk in relative silence for about forty-five minutes, the up-hill climb and hot weather stopping them from having full-length conversations. When they reach a small plateau, Dan suggests they take a break, and Phil seems more than happy to comply.

“I will admit I’m not the fittest guy in town,” Dan breathes, “but I still feel like I shouldn’t be this tired from a little exercise.”

Phil pushes his quiff up from his forehead and lets out a deep breath. “Same,” he puffs.

Dan steals a glance at the camera crew, who are not only forced to do the same hike, but also have to carry rather heavy-looking equipment. Frustratingly enough, they don’t seem to have even broken a sweat, nor do they need to catch their breath with their hands on their knees. They’re just chugging down bottles of water looking like they could be in a deodorant ad.

“This view better be worth it,” Dan says. His shirt is properly clinging to his back now and he can only imagine how gross and sticky it’ll feel when they reach the top. He decides to save his energy for the walk and sits down where he was stood, crossing his legs.

Phil nods distractedly as he searches for something in the pocket of his shorts before pulling out a travel-sized tube of sunscreen.

Dan can’t see from where he’s sitting, but he knows it’s factor fifty because Phil’s told him that’s what he always uses.

“Maybe you’ll burn to death before you fall to your death,” he jokes.

Phil’s eyebrows quickly go up and down in resigning agreement. “I’ll go up in flames and start a forest fire.”

Dan smiles, both at Phil’s joke as well as at a memory that just popped up in his mind. “Did you know I used to call myself danisnotonfire online?”

“Did you now?” Phil’s tone is a mix between amused and fond.

“Yep.” Dan shakes his head at the thought of his younger self. “I thought I was _so_ cool.”

“It’s a good name though. Original.”

Dan shouldn’t feel this pleased about Phil liking his username from eleven years ago (and by the way, how was that _eleven_ years ago), but he can’t help a smug smile from creeping onto his face.

“What about you, any embarrassing nicknames you want to share?”

Phil shakes his head and purses his lips. “Mine were just lame.” He sits down next to Dan, in the half-shade of a tree. “The one I used most was literally _AmazingPhil_.”

“Bit full of yourself, were you?” Dan teases.

“Tell me it’s a lie then,” Phil challenges him with a smile.

“I think _ClumsyPhil_ would’ve been a better fit. Or _AFallingPhil_.”

Phil rolls his eyes at him, but Dan can see the corners of his mouth twitching. “No wonder you ended up with _danisnotonfire_.”

Dan shrugs. “Not a lie though.”

“Neither is _AmazingPhil_.”

Dan gets up, wiping his dusty hands on his knees. “Alright, _AmazingPhil_ , let’s climb this _amazing hill_.”

Phil groans and scrunches up his face. “That actually, physically hurt.”

Begrudgingly, Dan admits that it was, in fact, a terrible joke. “Why am I always the one embarrassing myself?” he wonders.

Phil frowns. “When did you embarrass yourself?”

“When I told you my old username,” Dan reminds him. “And other times, but if you’ve forgotten already I won’t help you remember.” He can still feel his flaming cheeks from when Phil asked him about a possible daddy kink.

“Good thing everything is caught on camera. Even if you won’t tell me, I’ll be able to watch it all back in a couple of months.” He grins, entirely too pleased with himself. “Maybe I should ask the team to do a special compilation of all your dumb moments.”

Dan hides his face in his hand. “Oh god, I got married to a psychopath. Maybe I _should_ push you off a cliff.”

“Hey!” Phil protests.

Dan flashes him a bright smile. “Come on now, we’re almost –” he checks the nearest signpost – “halfway.”

Phil lets out a long-suffering sigh and Dan’s heart jumps with fondness.

It really is easy to get along with Phil.

He reaches out a hand to pull him upright.


	5. Chapter 5

“Ready?” Phil asks, dangling the key in front of Dan’s face.

“Go for it.”

Dan watches Phil put the key in the lock. It doesn’t turn smoothly, and Phil’s knuckles go slightly white from the force he has to put in, but then they hear a satisfying _click_ and Phil swings the door open to reveal their new home.

There’s a small corridor with just enough space to put away their coats and shoes, though it’s a tight fit with the camera that’s trying to capture that ground-breaking content. Moving further along into the lounge, large windows let in the afternoon sun, bathing the place in natural light. The light wooden floor and white walls are as basic as can be, but a colourful painting above the sofa stops the room from being too bland. A matching dark orange fauteuil stands in the corner next to a set of shelves. They’re probably meant to be bookshelves, but Dan’s only brought two books, and he doubts Phil has many more.

“Room for video games,” Phil remarks, pointing at the shelves as if he’s read Dan’s mind.

“I brought my Nintendo Switch,” Dan says.

Phil grins. “Me, too.”

If Phil really is as good at Mario Kart as he claims, Dan can see many nights on the sofa racing, but with Helen in the room, he doesn’t voice that thought. She probably thinks they’re boring enough already, after they spent the last two days of their honeymoon relaxing by the pool and getting a truly ridiculous amount of food delivered to their door.

The dining area is small but functional, a round table surrounded by four chairs, but the kitchen interests Dan more. They’ve got a kitchen island with breakfast bar near the table, and cabinets lining the entire opposite wall. There is a lot of overhead storage, too, and Dan knocks against one of the cabinet doors.

“I’m gonna hit my head on one of these before the week is over.”

Phil nods in understanding. “It’s not made for giants like us.”

“I hope the bed is. I hate when your feet stick out because the mattress is too short.”

Phil wiggles his eyebrows and Dan shoves his shoulder. “Not like that, perv.”

“I didn’t say anything!” Phil says incredulously, but his eyes sparkle with mirth.

“Your body language implied things.”

“That’s just what you want to think,” Phil counters.

Laughing, Dan rolls his eyes. “Alright, sure.” He pushes Phil back towards the lounge area. “Let’s go find the bedroom and see if we’re gonna have to suffer.”

The first door they pull open turns out not to be the bedroom, but the toilet. The walls and floor are tiled with shiny black hexagon tiles, and Dan’s never seen a toilet so aesthetically pleasing.

“I could live here,” he tells Phil, momentarily forgetting they haven’t known each other that long and declaring your love for a black toilet one week into your marriage might be a bit strange.

To Phil’s credit, all he does is raise his eyebrows.

Still, Dan feels the need to defend himself a little. “Black is my colour.”

Phil snorts. “I figured.” He gestures towards Dan’s outfit, black ripped jeans, black Vans, and a black shirt with a silver moon embroidered on it.

“Good thing you cannot judge my fashion choices, mister _I wear emoji pyjamas unironically_.”

“They made you laugh, didn’t they?”

“A bit.” Dan pushes open the next door. “I hope you forgot them in Portugal though.”

“Nope,” Phil says triumphantly. “They’re the first thing I packed.”

Dan lets out an exasperated sigh for extra dramatics. “Wonderful.”

It makes Phil laugh, which makes Dan smile as well.

“Bed seems big,” Phil says, flopping himself down on it and spreading his limbs out like a starfish. His arms reach the headboard easily, but his feet don’t hang over the edge.

Dan lies down next to him, his head on Phil’s arm, and nods. “Approved.” He’s glad they’re married, glad he gets to have these little touches without needing to make excuses.

Phil’s hand comes up to tousle his curls. “Your hair isn’t as curly today.”

“It’s ‘cause we’re back in England. The humidity in Portugal made it extra curly.”

“Too bad,” Phil says earnestly. “I like the curls. The more the better.”

Dan smiles. It had taken him years to gain enough confidence to not go to work with straighteners every morning, so Phil’s off-sided compliment tugs at his heartstrings a little.

“I’ll be a full-on hobbit again the second we get some rainy weather here, so don’t worry, you’ll be seeing a lot more of the curls soon.”

“Can’t wait,” Phil grins. He curls a strand of hair around his index finger and pulls a little, not nearly heard enough to hurt, more like he’s trying to test the springiness.

Dan wouldn’t mind if he pulled a bit harder, but it’s two o’clock in the afternoon and they’ve got a camera crew recording their every word, so he keeps that titbit of knowledge for another day.

“We haven’t seen the bathroom yet,” he says instead.

Phil hums but makes no move to get up. “You go look, I’m all comfy here.”

Dan snorts. “Diva,” he says, and his voice shouldn’t sound this fond, but he can’t help it.

He gets up and opens the last remaining door. The bathroom, like the rest of the apartment, is small, but not overly so. There’s a single yet large sink on one side, and a bath with shower on the other. Dan steps into the bath to check its size and is surprised to find his knees don’t hit his chest like they do in most baths. He can’t quite stretch them, either, but at least he’ll be able to submerge them in water for the most part.

“I think I found my favourite room,” he calls out to Phil.

“Why?”

Dan is still sitting in the bath, looking up when Phil appears in the doorway. “It’s got a good bath. I’m gonna buy some bath bombs and take full advantage of this.”

“Room for one more?” Phil asks, not even waiting for Dan to reply before he’s stepping into the bath already.

They fit, if only barely. Their legs are tangled together and there’d be more human than water in this bath if they were to fill it, but they fit.

“Getting ahead of yourself there, mate,” Dan chides gently, heart hammering in his chest. Neither of them usually initiates close contact like this, but it seems like Phil’s had a change of heart since they landed in England again. First the curls, now this…

Dan might be in for an interesting five weeks.

♡

The flat feels empty when Phil walks in.

Despite Dan and he taking the time to explore the place yesterday and unpacking all their stuff, it’s strange to come home to a place where he doesn’t even know the best place to put his keys, or how to tune the heating just right.

It’s not like it’s freezing cold inside, but the warmth he so desperately desired after getting caught in a hailstorm on his walk home isn’t exactly present, either.

Phil changes out of his wet clothes, putting on dark joggings and a T-shirt with a stretched-out neck, and fusses with the thermostat. However, there are too many buttons, and though Phil prides himself on being a digital native, this doesn’t make any sense to him.

He decides to wait for Dan to come home and fix it. He just hopes it won’t be too much longer.

After fixing himself a glass of Ribena, Phil splays himself across the sofa and starts typing a grocery list into his phone. They don’t have much food in the cupboards at the moment, and their fridge is bare save for some milk (for their obligatory cereal) and a random jar of mayonnaise that had been there already when they moved in.

Hopefully, he can convince Dan to order takeout once more. They already ordered pizza yesterday, blaming it on the fatigue from moving in, and Phil knows they’re gonna have to pretend to be successful adults soon and actually cook for themselves, but today is not the day.

And anyway, Dan can’t fault him for not cooking, because they don’t have anything to cook _with_ , and neither of them remembered to make a grocery list yesterday.

He’s halfway through the list, writing down _rice_ and _bell peppers_ , when the front door opens. From where he’s sitting, he can’t see Dan yet, but he can hear the squeaking of wet footsteps and the rustling of Dan shrugging off his coat.

He comes into view then, hair dry except for a few stray strands of hair at his temples, small droplets of water on his face, making it look like he just had a very intense workout.

“The weather is shite,” Dan greets him.

“I know,” Phil hums. “We should’ve stayed in Portugal.”

“We should’ve,” Dan agrees. “What are the plans for dinner?”

“Chinese delivery? We don’t have any groceries yet and I don’t fancy going back out.”

Dan laughs. “We need to stop getting takeout before it actually becomes a habit.”

Phil sighs. “I know.”

“But it’s fine for today.” Dan picks at his jeans and pulls a face. “I’m gonna go get changed first.” He walks towards their bedroom and shouts: “I want fried rice, chow mein, steamed vegetables, and spring rolls on the side please!”

So far, living with Dan isn’t that different to living with PJ. It’s the same laid-back energy, the same ease with which they navigate around each other in the small space of their flat. The only difference is that they’re sharing a room, and sleeping in the same bed, and even that has happened with PJ occasionally.

What has never happened with PJ, however, is Phil’s mouth going dry when he walks into the room. It happens with Dan now, as he lets himself fall on the sofa, his skin-tight jeans replaced by joggers similar to Phil’s.

He’s just – he’s well fit. Not fashion model fit with sharp cheek bones and abs like stone, but objectively, he’s a handsome man. Phil can’t help but stare sometimes.

If Dan notices, he doesn’t show it, just kicks his feet up the coffee table and leans his head back against the sofa. “What a relief to not have the cameras around today,” he breathes, eyes closed.

Phil’s gaze flicks down from his curls to the long lines of his neck, Dan’s collar bones _just_ peeking out from under his T-shirt. His skin has a warm golden glow to it, courtesy of the Portuguese sun.

Just in time, Phil remembers Dan said something, and he hums in vague agreement. Before he can get caught looking, he unlocks his phone and searches for his favourite Chinese restaurant. His stomach is starting to growl, and he knows he’s going to be positively starving by the time their food arrives.

“What kind of spring rolls do you want?” he asks as he goes through the order form. “Chicken or veggie?”

“Veggie.” Dan purses his lips, then adds, “Dumplings, too, by the way.”

Phil nods and ticks an extra box. “That it?”

Dan nods and stretches his arms above his head as he yawns. “That’s it,” he confirms.

“Done,” Phil says. “Now we wait,” he adds in a dramatic voice.

It makes Dan laugh, his dimple coming out in full force, and Phil’s stomach swoops.

“Maybe we should have a look at the homework we’ve been given by the experts,” Dan suggests.

Phil hums non-committedly. “It’s on the dresser in the bedroom.” He makes no move to get up, and Dan kicks a foot out at him, toes brushing his calve.

“That was a hint for you to go get it,” he complains.

A laugh bubbles up in Phil’s throat. “Nu-uh. I’m staying right where I am until our food gets here.”

“I bet the experts matched us together because we’re both equally lazy,” Dan murmurs, voice soft. His foot is still resting near Phil’s leg, not quite touching.

“We can do it tomorrow. We’re being filmed then, right? Helen probably wants us to do it on camera anyway.”

Dan nods. “Good excuse.”

Phil moves position slightly, pulling his legs up so his feet are flat on the sofa. There’s barely an inch between their feet now, and it’s probably ridiculous, but he’d swear he can feel the electricity sparking. Neither Dan nor he make any move to get closer, but neither of them move away, either.

It shouldn’t feel as big as it does.

♡

True to his word, Phil makes dinner for them the next day. Their first proper home-cooked meal. Admittedly, it’s a simply creamy pasta, but nonetheless Dan’s mouth is watering at the smell alone.

“This is a sight I could get used to,” he says as he walks into the kitchen.

Phil’s standing at the stove, stirring the pot, and Dan wants to move in for a kiss on the cheek, but with the cameras on them, he loses the courage he worked up in the train.

They haven’t kissed since their wedding day, and though they don’t shy away from small touches here and there, kisses, even on the cheek, seem like a step too far still.

Dan wonders if Phil feels the same awkwardness at their greetings.

“Well, don’t, Phil tells him. “My repertoire is very limited.” He glances up to flash Dan a smile.

“But if your entire repertoire tastes as good as this smells…” Dan takes a big sniff, humming contently.

The kitchen feels a bit cramped with four people in it, so Dan grabs a pair of plates and some cutlery and walks out to set the table in the dining room.

For good measure, he even rummages through one of the boxes they haven’t fully unpacked yet and finds a few candle lights, putting them on the table as well.

He knows there’s a lighter in the kitchen drawer under the stove, and when he goes to grab it, Phil is just adding some extra vegetables to the sauce. They’re hip-to-hip for a moment, arms brushing, making the hairs on Dan’s lower arm stand up.

“How long, chef?” he asks, mostly to distract himself.

“A few more minutes.” Phil lowers the heat. “Maybe we can do some of the questions the experts have given us?”

Dan nods. “I’ll get them.”

When they moved into the flat, they found an envelope on their pillows which contained thirty-five questions they could ask each other to get to know each other better. The experts’ note mentioned that although it was up to them what they wanted to do with the questions, it was recommended to go through a few of them so they could be used as an intro to topics they wouldn’t otherwise talk about.

The envelope is lying exactly where Phil said it was, and when Dan walks back to the dining room with it, Phil is just about to plate the pasta.

Though the presentation might not be restaurant-worthy, the delicious smell is.

As Dan swirls some pasta around his fork and takes his first bite, he has to swallow back a moan that threatens to escape. He hums around his mouthful, the rich flavour igniting his taste buds, and when he swallows, it warms his entire chest.

“So good,” he breathes, immediately going in for a second bite.

He doesn’t miss the flush on Phil’s cheeks and the bashful smile crinkling his eyes.

“I’m glad you like it,” Phil says softly. Dan can’t stop a smile from taking over his face.

From the corner of his eyes, he sees how one of the camera men licks his lips. He stifles back a giggle, dipping his head.

When he looks up again, Phil’s already looking at him, one side of his mouth curled up into a smile, eyes bright. Dan’s heart stutters at the sight.

“Wanna do some questions?” he manages to say.

Phil nods and reaches for the envelope, pulling out some cards. He clears his throat. “First one. If you could have dinner with anyone in the world, who would you pick and why?”

Dan purses his lips, carefully chewing through the remains of pasta in his mouth before answering. “Kanye.”

Phil pulls a sour face. “Really?” he asks.

Taking a sip of water, Dan hums. “I know he’s, like, controversial nowadays. Or always has been, actually,” he corrects himself, “but there’s no denying that he’s a creative genius.”

Judging by the look on Phil’s face, he disagrees, but he doesn’t interrupt.

“So yeah, I think it’d make for an interesting evening to talk about his view on the world.”

“Rather you than me,” Phil says honestly. “But cool.” He takes another bite.

“I feel like you’re judging me majorly right now.” Dan laughs softly.

Phil shakes his head as he swallows. “No, no.” He shrugs. “I guess I just didn’t expect that answer.”

“Alright,” Dan says, reaching his hand out across the table to grab the next question. “Your turn. Imagine you live to be ninety. For the last sixty years of your life, would you rather have the body of a thirty-year-old, or the mind of a thirty-year-old?”

Phil takes a deep breath, then exhales. “Mind. Not like this body is impressive enough to keep for another sixty years,” he chuckles, gesturing at himself.

Dan would like to disagree, but anything he could say sounds creepy in his head, so he just shakes his head.

“And I’d like to stay young at heart,” Phil adds. “I think there’s little worse than old people growing bitter.”

“Are you saying you’re not old yet?” Dan teases.

It earns him a kick to the shin and Phil laughing with his tongue between his teeth. “Shut up,” he says, but he couldn’t sound less put off if he tried.

“Just saying,” Dan continues, “I think I saw a grey hair on your pillow this morning.”

“Strange,” Phil muses. “Never had a grey hair before. Must be from having to put up with you.”

“Oi,” Dan warns him, no heat behind it.

Phil shrugs innocently, eyes glittering. His foot is still resting half on top of Dan’s.

♡

Phil’s heart misses a beat when they walk into the building, like his body remembers how nervous he was the previous times he came here and starts pumping some extra adrenalin through his veins just in case. Next to him, Dan seems calm, though Phil can see him chewing his bottom lip.

They’ve got their first counselling appointment together today, a check-in with Gemma to talk about their first week as a wedded couple. They’re booked in for an hour, which Phil thinks is a bit excessive. He doesn’t really know what there is to talk about besides the fact that they get along just fine. He searches his brain for memories of previous seasons, but comes up blank as the therapy segments have always been his least favourite to watch as a viewer, too.

Gemma greets them with a firm handshake and a warm smile, and it eases some of the tension in Phil’s stomach.

“Hello boys,” Gemma says as they all sit down, and she crosses one leg over the other. “How have you been?”

“Good, good.” Dan leans back in his seat. “It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster, to be honest.”

Gemma nods. “I can imagine. A fun rollercoaster?”

Dan glances sideways at Phil, and Phil can see the corner of his mouth twitch upwards. “Yeah,” Dan says. “Definitely.”

“And you, Phil? What was this first week like?”

It seems impossible to capture the true extent of all the emotions he went through in just a few short sentences, so after a second of silence, Phil says: “A lot. It was a lot.” He smiles. “I was so nervous before the wedding, worried you may not have understood my personality or something – no offence, by the way,” he adds, making them all laugh. “So I was a bit worried to be matched to someone who’s on a completely different wavelength.” His eyes dart towards Dan, who’s got the beginnings of a smile on his face. It’s distracting, the way his dimple is starting to show, the way his brown eyes are swirling with warmth.

“It seems to me your worries were unjustified,” Gemma prompts him with a gentle smile.

Phil looks back at her. “They were,” he nods.

“How did it feel to go on holiday with someone you barely knew?”

“I was scared Phil would be the active type who would go for a run at ridiculous o’clock in the morning or spend the entire afternoon surfing,” Dan jokes.

Phil snorts at the mere idea of himself surfing. He’d be off the board before a wave would even have the chance to throw him off.

“I think the first day was mostly just us trying to get a feel for each other,” Dan continues.

Gemma raises her eyebrows, and Phil chuckles softly as Dan rushes to clarify, “Not like that! Metaphorically speaking.” His cheeks turn pink.

“First day was definitely a bit strange,” Phil jumps in. “Even though we already talked loads during the photoshoot, and the party, and at the hotel, you still don’t really know each other. Going from total strangers to being together twenty-four hours a day, for five days… That’s intense.”

Dan hums, nodding.

“We provided separate bedrooms. Did you need that space for yourself?”

They shake their head at the same time.

“We decided to at least try sleeping together,” Dan says. “I think it’d be weird to get married and then sleep in different rooms from the start. Like you’re not giving it a proper shot.”

“Luckily, Dan doesn’t snore,” Phil adds, grinning at his husband. “But yeah, as Dan says, we at least wanted to try it. And we took time for ourselves during the day as well, so it didn’t feel like we could never escape each other.”

“I think-” Dan starts to say, but Phil is quick to interrupt him, “You seem to think a lot, is your head not hurting yet?”

Dan shoves his shoulder, his laugh sounding light and airy. “ _I think_ ,” he repeats with a stern look at Phil, “we realised we were both introverts like three minutes into our first conversation.”

It’s true. Phil had sighed something about being glad they got some time alone during the photoshoot, and Dan had echoed the sentiment. It’d been the first of many moments where Phil had realised how compatible they were.

“It’s nice to be able to just sit and be quiet together sometimes,” Phil says. “But it’s also nice to chat about whatever comes to mind. Dan’s a good listener.”

“And Phil talks a lot of shit,” Dan tells Gemma. Phil elbows him in the side without any real power.

Gemma laughs, then struggles to school her face back into a more neutral expression. “It definitely sounds like you’re comfortable with each other. I’m glad.”

They talk about the new apartment for a while, and about balancing working life with making time for each other, and then Dan and Gemma go on a tangent about communicating through texts, and Phil’s brain starts to go a bit fuzzy. He’s tired, mentally more than physically, like dissecting his relationship with Dan for an hour made him realise just how many big moments they’ve been cramming into such a limited time span.

Dan’s arm feels warm where it’s touching Phil’s, and Phil is tempted to rest his head on Dan’s shoulder, just for a little while, but the button flickering red on one of the cameras stops him.

He does lean a bit more heavily into Dan’s side. Dan’s fingers flex against his thigh, and it’s hard to tell whether it was an intentional move, but then Dan’s wrapping up the conversation with Gemma and they’re out the door before the fog in Phil’s head is entirely gone.

Dan is a walking half a step in front of him, but then he glances back at Phil and wordlessly stretches his hand out at him.

Phil takes it.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for the love, I appreciate it <3

“Dan!” Phil calls out.

“Yeah?” he hears from the kitchen.

“Are you coming?”

“Almost.” Dan sticks his head around the corner. “You know this would be faster if you helped, right?”

“I cook, you do the clean-up. It’s a fair deal.” Phil flashes him an angelic smile. Dan rolls his eyes in response, a smile of his own plastered on his face.

It’s not like Dan’s got much to complain about anyway. Their flat came with a dishwasher, so literally all he has to do is load it with two plates and some cutlery. And the three pots and one pan that Phil used for his chicken curry. And okay, maybe also three different tasting spoons, and a mug, and a half-empty bowl of soy sauce.

Still. No reason to whine.

On the television screen, the loading screen has long disappeared and the familiar tune to Mario Kart 8 fills the room.

Phil hears the click of the dishwasher being shut, and seconds later, Dan lets himself fall down next to Phil on the sofa.

“Ready to get your ass beat?” Dan asks, grabbing the remaining controller from the coffee table.

Phil clicks through to the character selection. “Thought we were playing a different game here,” he says, keeping his voice deadpan.

Dan blinks at him, then realises his own innuendo and snorts. “Okay, you got me there.”

The day before, they’d spend entirely too long creating Dan’s character on Phil’s Nintendo Switch (with some very heated debates over what hairstyle best matched real Dan’s hair, and a long plea from Phil to pick the potato-shaped nose instead of the boring ones), so they each select their own Mii character now.

When they move on to car selection, it quickly becomes clear that Dan has a very different approach to his vehicle design than Phil does.

“Are you seriously going to pick the shoe?” Dan asks incredulously.

“Yeah.” Phil nods, looking through the glider options already.

“Phil.” Dan shakes his head. “ _Phil_ ,” he repeats in a sugary sweet tone of voice. “I feel like you’re seriously underestimating my Mario Kart skills if you think you can beat me with a _shoe_.”

Phil shrugs and selects the pink plane glider.

Dan lets out a deep sigh. “If this is your tactic to make me go easy on you, it’s not gonna work,” he warns Phil.

It’s cute, the way he’s trying to convince them both that he’s gonna be the winner, but Phil has decades of Mario Kart experience. He was playing Mario Kart before Dan was even _born_ (although maybe not, he reconsiders that thought, because he doubts his mum let him play any video games at age three).

“What course do you want to do?” he asks, flipping through the options.

A few seconds pass in silence as Dan mulls over the question. “I feel like we have a moral obligation to go for rainbow road,” he says eventually. “Being the first gay _Married At First Sight_ match.”

Phil had been ready to defend his choice for his all-time favourite course, Cloudtop Cruise, but he’s got to admit Dan has a point. “I guess you’re right. Rainbow Road it is then!”

The game counts them down, and any hope Phil had to demonstrate his racing superpowers is destroyed when Dan immediately takes the lead, leaving Phil with the computer-steered characters.

“What a lovely day at Rainbow Road,” Dan muses. “It’s so quiet, I wonder where everyone is?”

Even without looking at him, Phil can simply _hear_ the grin he must be sporting right now.

“Just you wait…” he threatens, managing to shake off all but one of the other racers. He narrows his eyes, just barely avoiding a banana peel, and goes all out to shake off the remaining follower. For a moment, he can see Dan’s car in the distance, but then he rounds a corner and disappears out of sight again.

Despite his best efforts, Phil cannot get any closer to Dan during the entire duration of the race, and they cross the finish line with half a second difference.

Dan pumps his fist in the air and falls back against the sofa cushions. “Told you!” he grins at Phil.

“Beginner’s luck,” Phil grumbles, more for show than anything. He will admit he underestimated Dan’s capabilities, and he’s gonna do everything he can to beat him in the next round, but it’s the first time in months that Mario Kart has been such a challenge for Phil, and he finds that he rather enjoys it.

“Sore loser,” Dan throws back.

“Cheater.”

“Slowpoke.”

They both burst out laughing, and Dan’s dimple is so deep, and his laugh sounds like fairy bells. Phil ducks his head down before he does something stupid like reaching out a hand to feel the softness of Dan’s curls.

“Alright, rematch,” he says when their giggles have dwindled down a little.

Dan raises his eyebrows with a smirk, as if to say _are you sure?_

Half an hour in, Phil has managed to win twice, but they’ve since long lost track of Dan’s victories. Phil likes a challenge, but he also likes to win, so he starts poking Dan in the side, and when that doesn’t have the desired effect, he starts grabbing at Dan’s controller while trying to keep his own Mii under control.

“Get off me,” Dan says, pushing a foot against Phil’s thigh to keep him away. “Phil, oh my god, let me _race_!”

“I’m helping you,” Phil assures him, wrestling Dan’s thumb off of the joystick and moving it around randomly.

Dan elbows him in the ribs. “You’re _not_ helping!” Then he shrieks and swats Phil’s arm. “Look what you’ve done!”

Phil looks back at the tv screen, seeing their two Miis reach the finish line in slow motion, a computer-steered Mario in front of them.

“You made us lose against the Switch!”

A loud laugh bubbles up in Phil’s throat and he hides his face in Dan’s shoulder as his body shocks with it.

“I’m sorry,” he wheezes after a while, launching straight into another laughing fit when Dan threatens, “I’m gonna divorce you for this.”

Nothing has ever sounded more like a lie.

They end up playing for hours, racing on all their favourite courses, messing around with different vehicles, fucking each other over with items, and grabbing at each other’s controllers constantly.

Phil’s cheeks are positively aching by the time he rolls into bed.

♡

In less than a week, Dan has come to associate coming home with the warm smell of spices drifting out from the kitchen. Though they agreed to take turns cooking, Dan’s been caught up at the office almost every day of the week so far, putting the finishing touches to a social media campaign that’ll be launched soon.

Phil’s taken it in grace, not complaining once about the extra cooking, and Dan is grateful for it. He loves the simple domesticity of walking into the kitchen, greeting Phil with a kiss to the cheek, and grabbing plates to set the table. They move around each other in the small kitchen like it’s a well-practiced choreography, and Dan can’t even be mad about Phil leaving all the cupboard doors open, turning the kitchen into an obstacle course.

He just closes the doors one by one with a soft thud.

“Oops,” Phil murmurs with a soft smile, cheeks rosy from the heat of the stove. He’s stirring up another curry.

“With your coordination, it’s a miracle you don’t have more bruises,” Dan chides him gently.

“Been looking, have you?” Phil teases in a quiet voice, and Dan feels blood rush to his cheeks.

He has indeed been looking, late at night when they’re both brushing their teeth and Phil’s just standing there in his boxers, pale long legs on show, the horrible TL lighting casting shadows across the span of his shoulders.

They both stopped wearing full on pyjamas after two nights, and it’s a blessing and a curse at the same time.

“So what if I did?” Dan asks just as quietly, sounding braver than he feels.

Phil shrugs and licks some sauce of the spoon. Maybe it would have looked obscene if he didn’t dribble sauce all down his chin.

Dan bites his lip to stop a giggle from escaping and reaches his hand out to Phil face, using his thumb to wipe the mess away.

It’s about as far as his bravery stretches tonight. He turns around and rinses his hand with water, and when he looks back at Phil, he’s turning off the heat and mixing everything together in the big wok pan.

For the first time since they’ve known each other, they sit across each other at the table in silence. It’s not uncomfortable, but it’s not entirely comfortable, either. Dan wracks his brain for something to talk about, but his mind keeps wandering back to the moment they shared in the kitchen, and he comes up short.

Luckily, Phil saves him from his own thoughts. “I can’t remember the last time I had dinner at a proper table for more than two nights in a row.”

Dan laughs, perhaps a little too shrilly, and confesses, “I don’t even have a dining table in my flat.”

“You don’t?”

“Nope.” He shrugs. “It really is more of a studio than a flat, to be honest, and I really wanted to fit in a desk for my computer, so I sacrificed the dining table space.”

Phil smiles. “Good priorities.”

Coming from anyone else, it would’ve sounded mean, but Dan knows Phil means it.

“We do have a table in our flat, PJ and I, but we usually just eat in front of the tv,” Phil says. “The table is used when PJ’s girlfriend comes around and we suddenly have to pretend to be civilised people, or when we play boardgames with our other friends.”

“You like boardgames?” Dan can’t keep the surprise out of his voice.

“Yeah,” Phil admits a little ashamedly. “Doesn’t help with the nerd imago, I know.”

“Nothing wrong with being a nerd,” Dan brushes it off. Normally, he’d launch into a monologue about the reasons _being a nerd_ shouldn’t be an insult and why everyone is a little bit of a nerd, but he’s got a more important topic to uncover first. “What sort of boardgames?”

Phil puffs his cheeks up, slowly releasing the air between his lips. “Anything, really,” he says eventually. “I recently played Tokaido, if you know that? It’s this game where you’re basically travelling Japan and have to collect points by going to different places.”

“I’ve heard about it, but I haven’t played it myself. I don’t have any friends who like boardgames.” He lets out a short laugh, then adds, “Don’t have any friends in general.”

Phil’s brows furrow. “You’ve got Bryony, right? And – what’s his name? Her boyfriend?”

Dan nods. “Yeah,” he gives in. He doesn’t bother helping Phil remember Bryony’s boyfriend’s name – it’s been complicated between them for a while now, and Dan suspects they might break up soon. “They’re literally my only friends though.”

“Is that bad?” Phil asks. “I don’t have that many friends either, but the ones I do have are great. Quality over quantity.”

“There were loads of your friends at our wedding,” Dan retorts, almost stumbling over the word _our_. It still feels foreign to reference the wedding, and he twists his ring around his finger to push back the nervous butterflies that soar up in his stomach.

“Not loads,” Phil mumbles, almost embarrassed. “They were mostly people from uni, or people from home. We see each other maybe twice a year.”

“They’re still your friends.”

Phil hums. “Yeah, I guess. But you must have people like that, too.”

Dan shakes his head. “Believe me, I don’t,” he says, voice more bitter than he intends. “The first eighteen years of my life were proper shit.”

He can see the questions in Phil’s eyes, the comforting words on his lips, but he really does not want to have this conversation now. “Believe me,” he repeats, and Phil seems to get the hint, because he closes his mouth and nods, but the frown between his eyes remains.

♡

“Let’s do another set of questions tonight,” Dan suggests between two spoonfuls of cereal.

Phil is still trying to rub the sleep out of his eyes as he stands in front of the coffee machine, blindly reaching for a mug and pressing the button he’s got engrained in his muscle memory by now. “Sure,” he yawns, turning around to where Dan’s sitting at the kitchen island. He’s got one leg pulled up on the chair, resting his chin on his knee as he chews, scrolling through his phone with the hand that’s not holding the spoon.

Even though Phil’s wearing his contact lenses, Dan is still a bit blurry on the sides, and Phil blinks again to clear his vision. He likes this early morning version of Dan, when his hair is all tousled and he’s got pillow marks on his cheek.

Dan absolutely refuses to go out if his hair is any less than perfect, and he manages to look effortlessly stylish in anything he wears, so to see him sitting in their shared kitchen in just his boxers and a faded Zelda shirt is a good reminder that he’s not just some vision Phil’s dreamed up.

Dan lifts his head and catches Phil’s gaze, lips curling up into a soft smile. “Your coffee is going cold,” Dan tells him.

It’s exactly the sort of smile that Phil finds himself thinking about at work later, staring off into space with a dazed expression. He’s lucky none of his colleagues seem to notice anything strange – or no stranger than usual, at least.

Phil opens up the text conversation he has with Dan. So far, they’ve only used it for practical messages, like who’s coming home when and what they need to grab from the supermarket, and Phil’s fingers hover over the emoji keyboard for a while, tempted to send Dan the heart-eyed emoji, or the blushing smiley face, or maybe even a straight-up heart.

In the end, he chickens out of declaring his love for Dan over text, and texts Dan the lion emoji.

Within less than a minute, Phil sees the ‘Delivered’ status change to ‘Read’, and that probably shouldn’t make him as happy as it does.

It doesn’t take long for Dan to send back a llama, and that sets them off on a proper emoji conversation. At first, they stick to the animal section, but after Phil sends a spider, Dan texts the screaming emoji, to which Phil replies with the SOS button, and they’re off on another tangent sending each other all the weird emoji that nobody really knows the meaning off.

By the end of the day, Phil’s recently used emoji section is completely ruined, and the video edit he had planned on finishing is not even halfway done, but he’s so happy he can’t even be annoyed when he steps into dog poop two streets away from home.

It seems like he’s not the only one who’s in a good mood, because he walks in on Dan draining pasta while humming a tune under his breath. Phil can’t tell if it’s a real song or simply a melody that Dan’s made up, but he could listen to it all evening.

Phil can’t help but feel selfishly disappointed when Dan notices him and stops singing. Phil closes the distance between them and pulls Dan into a hug, their usual ritual of kisses on the cheek not quite sufficient to transfer his good mood.

Dan hugs him back just as tight, and his breath tickles Phil ear when he murmurs, “Hi there.”

“Hi,” Phil says back. He lets go before he truly wants to and tries not look at the camera directly. It’s been three days since they last had a manned camera in the flat, and Phil finds he hasn’t missed it at all. He can forget about the unmanned cameras scattered across the rooms, but having an extra person with them feels invasive.

Maybe Oliver, the camera man that had also filmed their house visits, feels a little out of place, too, because he noticeably tries to blend into the background, giving Dan and Phil some breathing room.

“You wanted to do the questions?” Phil asks when they’ve both filled their plates.

Dan slurps up a spaghetti noodle and nods.

They left the question cards on the table from the previous time, so Phil stretches his arm out and pulls a new card. “Name three things you and your partner have in common,” he reads to Dan.

“We’re both tall,” Dan says immediately, making Phil snort. “We like video games. And…” He purses his lips, thinking. “You’re a night owl, too.”

Phil nods. “Thought you were gonna say we’re both gay.”

Dan laughs, then says, “I wasn’t sure.”

“If I was gay?” Phil demonstratively holds up the hand on which he wears his wedding ring. “Mate.”

Dan shakes his head with a soft smile. “I knew you weren’t straight. But we’ve never actually talked about labels, so I didn’t want to assume you weren’t bi or something.”

Phil’s mouth falls open a little and he’s ashamed to admit to himself he hadn’t even considered the possibility that Dan didn’t label himself as gay. It had just seemed so obvious.

“I am. Gay, I mean,” he says.

Dan hums, one corner of his mouth curling into a smile. “Okay. Same.”

“Did you ever question it?”

“I did have a girlfriend at some point,” Dan says slowly, clearly carefully choosing his wording. “But I think I knew already. I just didn’t want to admit it to anyone, least of all myself.”

Phil’s lips curl up into a small smile. “I know,” he says quietly. “I never dated girls, because I was scared to talk to them. I did have a massive poster of Sarah Michelle Gellar above my bed as a teenager though, so I was clearly compensating as well.”

Their eyes meet, and Phil is taken aback by the shininess of Dan’s. He’s smiling, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes, and Phil is reminded again that he doesn’t even know half of Dan’s life story yet. With the camera still on them, it feels wrong to dig deeper, and Dan doesn’t offer any more information either.

Phil hooks his foot around Dan’s ankle and by the time they finish eating, Dan’s eyes are sparkling again, and it feels like the moment is gone.

♡

The third time Dan straightens out the cushions on the sofa, Phil laughs at him and puts a hand on his arm.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” Dan echoes automatically.

“It’s just my friends coming for a visit, not the queen herself.”

“I know.”

A smile plays around the corners of Phil’s mouth. “No reason to be nervous.”

Dan takes a deep breath and releases it slowly. It’s easy for Phil to say that – they’re _his_ friends. Dan has only met them briefly at the wedding, and the memories from that day are such a blur that he can barely recall their faces now.

“Dan.” Phil chuckles softly. “It’ll be fine, I promise. They’re excited to meet you.”

Dan hums non-committedly, and Phil presses him down onto the sofa by his shoulders.

“Seriously, sit. I’m gonna get the last snacks in the kitchen.”

“I can–” Dan says, already halfway to standing up when Phil fixes him with a stern look. He lets himself fall down on the sofa again. “Fine,” he grumbles.

Phil laughs airily, walking into the kitchen and grabbing the last two bowls of snacks.

Right as he’s putting them on the coffee table, the doorbell rings, and Dan’s heart skips a beat. Phil shoots him an amused smile and offers him a hand.

Dan feels like a child when they walk to the hallway and he stands a little behind Phil as he opens the door, the way he used to when his grandmother had friends over that he felt slightly intimidated by.

Just like Phil told him, he’d had no reason to be nervous, because Phil’s friends don’t hesitate to greet him with the same warm hugs they’re giving Phil, and when PJ spots a loose sock from Phil, Dan just joins in on the laughing.

He gives Phil a small nod when they all walk into the living room, and Phil bumps their shoulders together, as if to say _I told you so_.

“So how are you enjoying living with Phil so far?” Sophie asks after Dan has poured everyone drinks.

“Is he as much of a slob as he is at home or is he trying to impress you?” PJ adds.

Phil lets out an offended “Hey!” and pouts his lips. Dan can’t help but think it’s so clear that he is a younger sibling, the way he gets all indignant when someone gives him a hard time.

“He’s alright,” Dan says in a flat voice, shrugging. Phil rolls his eyes at him. “No, really,” Dan laughs, patting Phil’s knee. “I’m not mad we got matched. He’s good fun.”

“And a slob?” PJ pries.

With a glance at Phil, Dan admits, “A bit.”

“I knew it!” PJ exclaims, leaning back against the sofa. “I bet he leaves all the cupboard doors open, doesn’t he? And he forgets to switch the bathroom light off all the time.”

“I don’t recall inviting you to the _drag Phil evening_ ,” Phil quips, raising his eyebrows, though a twitch near his mouth gives away the smile he’s holding back.

“I’m not dragging you, I’m offering Dan support.”

Despite the undeniably friendly nature of PJ and Phil’s bickering, Dan does feel the need to defend his husband’s honour at least a little.

“He’s not that bad. And he’s been cooking a lot, so that makes up for all the mess he makes.”

PJ raises his eyebrows with a smirk, but he’s stopped from making any more comments by Sophie jabbing her elbow in his ribs.

“That’s nice,” she smiles. “Did you live on your own before, Dan?”

“I did, yeah. I thought I’d struggle having to share a space with a near stranger, but it’s been quite nice having someone to talk to when I get home.”

“And I’m used to PJ, so literally no roommate could be worse than him,” Phil says. He’s got his arm slung over the back of the sofa, his hand resting just above Dan’s shoulder, looking utterly relaxed in the presence of his friends.

PJ raises his eyebrows. “I’m the best roommate ever, stop spreading lies.”

Dan shifts his position a little so Phil’s fingers brush the sleeve of his T-shirt. He doesn’t think anyone notices, but then Sophie gives him a warm smile.

He smiles back, a little unsure, but she doesn’t say anything.

Next to him, Phil and PJ are caught up in a loop of “are not” and “am too”, and the easy familiarity of their banter would probably stir something like jealousy inside of Dan’s stomach if Phil’s fingers weren’t drawing tiny circles at the back of his neck at the same time.

He leans into the touch a bit more, pulling his legs up underneath himself.

Despite their unusual start, sitting here with Phil’s friends feels awfully nice. They want to hear from Dan as much as they want to hear from Phil, and a few drinks in, they’re teasing Dan the same way they’re teasing Phil.

Phil’s cheeks are pink and his eyes are bright, one arm now fully slung over Dan’s shoulders, talking a little too loudly for someone claiming to be sober. Dan knows he must look the same, warm and rosy from the alcohol, and he can’t even pretend to be offended when PJ winks at him as they say their goodbyes in the corridor.

“You’re in for a good night,” PJ says, slurring his vowels. He’s got an arm around Sophie’s shoulders, probably more for support than as a loving gesture.

Dan feels blood rush to his cheeks, but he doesn’t think PJ sees, and he just hugs the other man goodbye without reacting to his statement.


	7. Chapter 7

The new week starts off with a thunderstorm somewhere in the early hours of the night.

The first thunderclap wakes Dan just enough to realise he’s not sleeping anymore, but it’s the second one that drives away the sleep completely.

He turns onto his back and slings an arm over his eyes, hearing the rhythmic tapping of rain droplets against the bedroom window. Through the crack between his arm and the bridge of his nose, he can see lightning lighting up the room in eery blue.

Next to him, Phil stirs in his sleep, a small whimper escaping his lips.

Dan smiles and turns on his side, propping his head up on his arm. He hasn’t had a lot of chances to just… look at Phil. There were the stolen glances during their honeymoon, and the more obvious ones, and it’s not like he hasn’t been watching Phil cooking, or spread out on the sofa scrolling through his phone, but those moments were always laced with disappointment at time running out. There was always a reason why Dan couldn’t keep looking, be it his own self-consciousness, the scrutinous gaze of the ever-present cameras, or simply the cooking timer shrilly interrupting the moment.

So here, now, in the dark of the night, Dan takes the time to look at how Phil’s lashes cast long shadows under his eyes, his high cheekbones accentuated by the natural highlight of the pale moonlight. For the first time, Dan sees the way Phil’s hairline is starting to recede ever so slightly near his temples, his usual quiff lying flat against his forehead.

There’s another thunderclap, louder than the previous ones, and Dan watches as Phil’s eyelids tremble and then blink awake in quick succession.

Phil lets out a puff of air, turning onto his side so he’s facing Dan as he closes his eyes again, but he must have caught Dan’s gaze, or must have sensed that he wasn’t the only one awake, because he opens his eyes again, scrunching them half-closed against the moonlight immediately.

Dan smiles, just a twitch of his lips. “Hi,” he whispers, more air than sound.

Phil closes his eyes briefly, then opens them again, like some kind of simplified Morse code.

It’s easier to hold each other’s gaze in this midnight state when the lines between dream and reality are blurry, and sleep will file off the sharp edges of their memories.

Phil’s change in position made the hair of his quiff fall over his forehead more, casting a shadow over one of his eyes, and Dan very slowly reaches out a hand.

Phil’s eyes follow his movement, and they flutter closed when Dan brushes the hair away and off to the side, barely touching the skin.

Dan misses the touch before he even finishes the gentle swipe, and he runs the tips of his fingers across the arch of Phil’s brow, over his temple, settling on the sharp jut of his cheekbone.

The silence in the room is deafening, occasionally interrupted the low rumbling of the sky in the far distance.

Dan can feel the warmth of Phil’s breath against the pulse point on his wrist.

“You’re very pretty,” he murmurs.

Still sleep-drunk, Phil mumbles back something that sounds like _you_. A smile tugs at the corners of Dan’s mouth, warmth settling inside his stomach like liquid honey, slow and sweet.

He tugs his other arm free from where it was going numb under the weight of his own head and places it on the other side of Phil’s face. Phil lifts his head just enough for Dan to slide his hand between the pillow and his cheek, and then he’s cradling Phil’s head like he’s the world’s most precious work of art.

Right now, it definitely feels like he is.

He doesn’t know how long they lie like that, drinking each other in. He half expects Phil to doze off again, but with each barely-there brush of Dan’s fingers, he seems to become more awake, until his eyes are fully open, and the moon colours them silver.

Dan’s heart feels like it might explode with all the things he’s feeling, and it’s not entirely a conscious choice when he brings his head forward.

He pauses for a second, eyes flitting over Phil’s face, giving him a chance to move away.

Phil doesn’t.

Instead, his lips part ever so slightly, and he gives Dan the tiniest nod, head moving just a few millimetres.

It’s enough.

As slow as all his previous moves, Dan closes the gap between their lips, feeling the soft plumpness of Phil’s lips against his own chapped ones.

The second their mouths meet, Dan regrets the nearly three weeks they wasted dancing around each other. Their first kiss after officially tying the knot had done _nothing_ to prepare him for the electricity that’s currently running through his veins, the way his brain short-circuits and all he can focus on is the warmth of Phil’s mouth.

Phil tugs at his bottom lip and Dan’s lips part in response, tasting the faint remnants of toothpaste on Phil’s tongue. Phil’s hand travels up his arm, fingers dusting over the sensitive part of Dan’s neck, and Dan barely has any constraint left to swallow back a moan.

He breaks their kiss, leaning their foreheads together, his breath coming out in sharp, ragged pants.

Phil tangles his fingers in Dan’s hair, a smile on his face, and pulls away slightly.

At the edge of his vision, Dan can see the steady rise and fall of Phil’s chest. He feels his own heart hammering in his chest, and he slides his hand down from Phil’s cheek to his chest, resting it over his heart. He needs to know if Phil is as affected by this as he is.

He is. Phil’s heart beats like it wants to jump out of its cage, and Dan can’t help but smile down at it.

When he looks back up, Phil is watching him with amused curiosity.

Dan can’t help but kiss him again, slower, trying not to lose his mind.

This time, it’s Phil who pulls away after a while, pressing a kiss to Dan’s forehead, his temple, on the corner of his mouth.

Dan hasn’t felt this content in – well.

Maybe never.

♡

“What the fuck,” Dan says the second he walks through the door, and quite frankly, Phil thinks he could've reacted a bit more excited.

He walks towards Dan and gives him a quick kiss on the lips. It still feels a bit strange to be kissing him just like that, just because he wants to, and he wonders when he'll stop counting (this was their third kiss since Dan kissed him, seventh if he counts the lazy morning ones separately).

“You wanna explain this?” Dan asks, one corner of his mouth curled up as he gestures around the room where Phil has set up an impromptu painting atelier. The easels he'd borrowed from his friend Jimmy, and the canvasses were only five pounds each at a local Poundland.

“So I know you've been busy at work,” Phil says, tutting when Dan goes to excuse himself. “I told you it's fine, no need for excuses. Anyway, since you've been so busy, I thought it'd be fun to do something relaxing. Google's first hit suggested couple’s yoga, but to be honest, that sounded really dangerous for someone with my level of coordination.”

Dan snorts, putting a hand in his side as he patiently waits for Phil to get to the point.

“And another tip was going for a walk, but the weather is shite. And then, finally, I read the best advice ever.”

Dan shakes his head with an amused smile. “My god, Phil, you're not presenting a tv show. Just say it already.”

“I'm building suspense,” Phil tells him. “So, the golden tip... Painting something using a Bob Ross tutorial!”

“Right,” Dan says. “Have I told you my drawing skills are those of a five-year-old?”

Phil shrugs. As if he cares that they won't paint the next Mona Lisa's. “So are mine.”

Dan runs a hand over his face. “Okay. Sorry I'm not cheering with enthusiasm, I just - this is the last thing I expected.” He pecks Phil's cheek. “Give me five minutes to wrap my head around this and get changed, okay?”

It's hard not to show the disappointment on his face, but Phil manages. “Sure.”

Maybe this was just a dumb idea to begin with. It seemed fun and a little different, and like they could have a good laugh trying to imitate the master himself, but maybe things like this were only cool in teenage romcoms or cheesy chick lits.

He's halfway through gathering the paint brushes and putting them back in the box when Dan's hands suddenly land on his shoulders, his voice close to Phil's ear. “Hey, what are you doing?”

“Tidying up.”

“Why?” Dan sounds genuinely surprised.

Phil turns around so he’s looking at Dan. “Because you’re not up for it.”

Dan raises his eyebrows. “I didn’t say that.”

“Maybe not literally, but the message was clear.”

“Phil.” Dan gives him a small smile, though Phil fails to see what’s funny. “I told you, you caught me by surprise. I’d just come home from eight hours of back-to-back meetings, I just needed a little bit of time to wrap my head around your plan.”

Phil sighs, decisively staring at a speck of dirt on the wall behind Dan. “Look, we don’t have to do this if you’re not up for it.”

“Phil,” Dan says again, placing his thumb and index finger under Phil’s chin and turning his head so Phil had no excuse not to look at Dan. “I _promise_ I’m up for it. I wouldn’t lie about that.”

They stare at each other as Phil chews the inside of his cheek.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” Dan prompts gently.

“Alright, fine,” Phil gives in. “I just feel like you don’t like the whole painting thing so you’re faking enthusiasm. And it’s not fun if you’re doing it against your will when it’s supposed to be relaxing.” He’s quiet for a few seconds, then adds, “And now we’re arguing about it.”

“We’re not arguing. We’re communicating our feelings.”

A smile breaks out on Phil’s face. “If that’s what you wanna call it.”

Dan smiles, too, but he sounds serious when he says, “I can’t read your brain, and you can’t read mine, so if we want to make this marriage work, the best tool we have is open and honest communication.”

“Fair point,” Phil begrudgingly agrees. He wraps his arms around Dan’s waist and leans his head against his shoulder. “Did you steal that line that from your therapist?” he mumbles softly.

Dan crosses his arms around Phil’s shoulders and his chest vibrates with a silent laugh. “Maybe,” he admits. Phil can feel his lips pressing a kiss to the top of his head. “Come on, you promised me some relaxing painting.”

“I’m not sure how successful we’ll be considering all the paint comes from Poundland,” Phil warns him.

“Even better. I won’t have to feel guilty about wasting really fancy paint on my horrendous attempt at art.”

Phil gets the video playing on his laptop, then stands next to Dan at the other easel. He watches the intro to the show, then says, “Hey, Dan?”

Dan hums as he squeezes out some paint onto a cardboard palette. “Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

Dan doesn’t reply, simply looks up at Phil with a wide smile, and the butterflies in Phil’s stomach make a series of somersaults.

Despite following Bob Ross’ instructions to paint water, trees and clouds, Dan and Phil both end up with what could at best be interpreted as abstract renditions of the night sky. Even worse, there is probably more paint on Phil’s arms and shirt than what made it onto his canvas, and when Dan cheekily suggests helping him shower, Phil’s “you wish” doesn’t sound all that convincing.

♡

Dan watches Phil interact with Dan’s family more easily than Dan ever has been able to, and rather than jealousy, pride flares up in his chest.

Here he is, at age twenty-six, living in London on his own, working a job that barely feels like work, freshly married to the man he could see himself spending quite some years with. It’s a shame his father didn’t bother to make the effort to come see his oldest son thriving after dropping out of university in his first year, but Dan supposes too much time has passed since then for the two of them to ever have a chance at a normal father-son bond again.

It’s a miracle his father even attended the wedding ceremony at all, though Dan is still bitter he’d bailed out of the party afterwards.

Dan watches the crinkles around his mother’s eyes deepen as she laughs at Phil’s rendition of their painting session the other night, and his grandma chimes in to tell Phil how she used to watch Bob Ross when his show was first aired on the BBC.

“I didn’t know they had television in the prehistory,” Dan dares to say.

Despite his age and despite being in a restaurant, his grandma reaches out to pull at his ear, and Dan places his hand on her arm in apology as they all laugh.

“Anyway, both our paintings looked like they were made by toddlers, so clearly painting isn’t as easy as Bob Ross claims,” Phil says.

Dan’s grandma coos. “Aw, Dan, you used to be so good at drawing when you were little.”

Dan hums vaguely. “Guess that talent got lost somewhere along the line,” he shrugs. “Together with all my hopes and dreams,” he adds under his breath.

His mum and grandma don’t catch it, but Phil frowns a little. Dan gives his hand a quick squeeze.

“Oh, mum,“ Dan’s mother says suddenly after a glance at her watch. “We should start heading back to the station, our train is leaving in thirty.”

A wave of relief washes over Dan, and he suddenly notices how shallowly he’d been breathing for the last hour. He loves his family, he truly does, despite everything, but this… _thing_ with Phil is still so new, so fragile, it feels a bit strange to be bringing his family into the equation when they have such a troubled history.

Dan’s mum gives him a hug, whispering “he’s lovely, darling,” in his ear, and Dan can’t do anything but nod. Phil _is_ lovely, and he’s glad his mum sees it, too.

The scent of his grandma’s perfume is strong as she kisses his cheek, and it still smells as comforting as it did twenty years. Dan swallows back the knot that’s forming in his throat and takes an extra deep breath, breathing in the flowery, powdered aroma.

“It was a pleasure seeing you again, Phil,” Dan’s grandma says when they’re all standing outside the restaurant. “I can tell you make each other happy.”

Dan and Phil look at each other with shy smiles, cheeks tinted pink. “Thanks, grandma,” Dan says softly. “You should get going now, before you miss your train.”

“Bye, boys,” Dan’s mum waves.

They echo their own goodbyes, and Dan stares at their shrinking silhouettes until a group of tourists blocks his view.

“That was nice,” Phil says, a hint of caution in his voice.

“It was,” Dan agrees. He bites his lip.

Phil slings his arms around Dan’s shoulder and pulls him into his side as they walk. “You alright? You’ve been a bit quiet all afternoon.”

“Just thinking.” Dan slides his own arm around Phil’s waist, under his T-shirt. He can feel goose bumps on the skin where his cold fingers touch.

“About?”

He shrugs. “Dunno.” It’s difficult to put words to the things Phil makes him feel, let alone when those feelings become muddled with the difficulties of Dan’s family history.

Silence falls between them. On the other side of the street, a dog barks at a pigeon.

Dan kicks at a few brown leaves on the pavement, trying to piece together his thoughts. Over the years, therapy has helped him to learn how to voice his thoughts even when he can’t make sense of them yet. “It’s weird seeing you with my family. The only other person I’ve ever introduced to them was my girlfriend when I was sixteen.”

“But you dated other people in the meantime, right? Did your family not know about them?”

Sometimes, it’s easy to forget they’ve really only known each other for three weeks, but it’s questions like these that remind Dan he has an entire life that Phil has only heard snippets about. They’ve barely grazed the surface of who they are today, let alone who they were before, all those versions of themselves they’ve lived through.

“I only really dated two people. One when I was eighteen, someone I’d met online and who happened to be studying in Manchester, too. And the other one a few years ago. And then some loose things here and there that never led anywhere.”

“And you didn’t tell your family about any of them?”

“They didn’t know.”

“Why?” Phil pushes. It’s a sign of their different upbringings that he’s struggling so hard to understand. “Did they not approve of you being gay?”

Dan sighs. “They didn’t know,” he says again, though he knows it doesn’t answer Phil’s question.

Phil stops walking. Dan stubbornly doesn’t look at his face.

“They didn’t know you were gay?”

All Dan does is nod once.

“Why?” Phil asks. “I can’t read your mind,” he echoes Dan’s own words back at him when Dan doesn’t reply straight away.

“Wasn’t ready for it, I guess.”

“So when did you tell them then?”

Dan looks at him for a long time. “September.”

Phil’s eyes go comically wide, though nothing is particularly funny to Dan right now. “Like, September this year? Two months ago?”

“Yep.” He lets the p pop loudly.

“Dan.” Phil manages to pack confusion, sadness and pity all in that one syllable.

Dan lets himself slip back into past bad habits. “It’s fine,” he deflects Phil’s concern.

They walk home in silence. Phil’s brows are drawn together in a frown and his mouth is set in a hard line. His arm remains around Dan’s shoulder, but it seems like an unconscious choice, like he forgot it was there.

There is a lot Dan could say. A lot he probably _should_ say.

But he doesn’t.

♡

Dan launches himself onto the couch the second the second he has taken his coat off. The cushions make a dull sound when the sudden load of his weight lands on them.

Kicking his shoes off, Phil undoes the buttons of his own coat, one by one. He can only see the top of Dan’s head from here, the little tufts of hair that the wind had left extra unruly. He doesn’t have to see the rest of Dan to know he’s on his phone, scrolling through Reddit threads. Maybe he’s looking at the dog thread he showed Phil a few days ago.

Phil sighs quietly. Dan’s doing exactly what he accused Phil of just two days earlier. Avoiding confrontation.

He can’t believe Dan’s family hadn’t known he was gay until he was about to get married to a guy. It makes Phil’s insides turn, imagining having to hide such an essential part of himself for so long.

Phil knows his own coming out was something many other people could only dream of. He doesn’t even recall ever having had an official moment with his family, just remembers bringing his date-then-boyfriend over more and more frequently, and how his mum had asked “Is he coming around for Christmas?” before Phil had even considered it himself.

His parents aren’t perfect, and their view on the world can definitely feel a little outdated sometimes, but everything they do is rooted in an unwavering love for their children. It isn’t hard to guess that Dan’s childhood must’ve been very different.

Phil’s thumb is warm where he’s been running it over the collar of his coat absentmindedly. He sighs again and hangs his coat up, then pushes his shoes closer to the wall with his foot.

Dan doesn’t look up when he walks to the couch, though he must hear Phil’s footsteps.

Phil lies down next to him, and Dan goes easily when he’s pushed closer against the back of the sofa. Despite the size of their bodies, the past weeks have already proven they can both fit on the sofa, shoulders tightly pressed together.

Leaning his head down against Dan’s shoulder, Phil watches as Dan indeed scrolls through dog content on Reddit. He’s scrolling too fast to actually be looking at the pictures, but Phil doesn’t call him out on it.

“So.” The silence has added a rasp to Phil’s voice, and he clears his throat. “September?”

Dan hums. Apparently, he has no plans to make this a smooth conversation.

“Would you have told them if it weren’t for the program?” Phil tries to not let any trace of judgement seep through in his tone. He thinks he manages.

The same dog keeps staring at them now, a chocolate Labrador puppy wearing a flower crown. Phil thinks it could be Dan in dog form, though it seems safer not to voice that thought out loud. He’s not sure how Dan would handle being compared to a puppy at this time, no matter how cute it is.

The silence stretches out between them, but just as Phil is about to get up and like, go iron his clothes to give Dan some space, Dan speaks up.

His voice is quiet, subdued. “I’m not sure.”

He sounds like he wants to say more, and Phil wills himself to stay very still, even though he wants to tilt his head up so he can see Dan’s face. He feels the slight movement of Dan’s jaw against the top of his skull, like he’s opening his mouth to say something and then closing it again when he can’t find the words.

“I’d been…” Dan swallows and restarts. “I’d been meaning to tell them. I had it all planned out, how I would tell them and when and what I would say, down to the last comma. I was gonna do it in June, right before my birthday, because I figured… Well. At twenty-five, you’re still practically a kid playing adult, right? At twenty-six, you’re basically thirty, you’re supposed to start getting your shit together.”

“Think I missed that memo,” Phil murmurs, mostly to add some humour to the otherwise heavy mood. It works. Dan laughs, just once, a sharp puff of air escaping his lips.

“So I was all ready for it. Or so I thought.” Dan shrugs, or attempts to, because his shoulder doesn’t have much leeway with Phil’s body plastered to his side. “I chickened out when my dad saw a news report about pride. He said something about not caring if anyone was going but they didn’t have to shove it in his face like that, sticking feathers in their ass and smearing glitter on their cheeks _like girls_. I don’t even remember what he said, I’ve blocked it out, mostly, but you get the gist.”

Dan’s phone screen goes black and Phil can see the both of them in the dark surface, his head tucked against Dan’s neck, Dan’s eyes still on the screen.

They watch each other through the reflection. It’s hard to read Dan’s face when his usually expressive eyes are reduced to nearly black orbs.

Dan loosens his grip on his phone so it falls flat against his chest.

“Didn’t fancy telling him his oldest son would happily stick feathers up his ass and put glitter on his face if it meant getting accepted. Three months later, I got a call from _Married At First Sight_ and I had to tell him anyway.”

There isn’t much Phil can say. He tries, saying “I’m-” but Dan cuts him off before he can say _sorry_.

“I don’t need your pity.” His tone is clipped, but Phil can hear the slight wavering in it, too.

He lifts his head off of Dan’s chest and rolls himself on top of Dan so they’re aligned head to toe, Phil’s left leg resting between both of Dan’s.

Dan lets out a quiet _oomf_ and Phil shifts his weight a little so he’s not resting his weight onto Dan’s chest as much. He places both of his hands on either side of Dan’s face and marvels at the warmth, the trust he finds in his eyes.

“For what it’s worth, coming from someone you’ve only known for a few weeks,” Phil says softly, “I’m proud of you.” He leans in closer. “And I’m so, _so_ happy I got matched to you,” he whispers against Dan’s lips before he kisses him, slow and sweet.

It doesn’t take long before Dan’s lips part in invitation and Phil licks into his mouth, always eager to get more of Dan.

Dan’s hand comes to rest on the small of his back, the other hand tickling the back of his neck, twisting its fingers into the short hairs at the base of Phil’s neck. He pulls a little and Phil smiles into the kiss, recognizing the fidgeting for impatience.

If there is one thing he’s learnt about Dan so far, it’s that he is as composed as anything, until it comes to kissing.

Phil tugs at Dan’s bottom lip, biting into it ever so slightly, and Dan arches his chest, almost toppling Phil off of him. It’s a stronger reaction that Phil had expected, and he stifles his laugh in Dan’s neck.

At first, he thinks Dan is just catching his breath, the panting loud in the otherwise quiet room, but then Phil notices the shudders that go through his body when he breathes against his neck, and _oh_. That’s interesting.

He presses his lips to the side of Dan’s neck, just under his jaw. It’s barely a touch at all, but Dan’s breath hitches and he tilts his head so Phil has full access to the sensitive skin of his neck.

Phil does it again, more forceful this time, pulling away before he can form an actual mark. He doesn’t think Dan would be opposed to that, but he wants to be sure before he acts.

Asking Dan right now doesn’t seem fair though, with the way he’s looking at Phil all dazed. It makes Phil chuckle, happiness bursting in his chest like a sunflower springing open.

He peppers featherlight kisses across the expanse of Dan’s neck, over his collar bone, back up to the sharp of his jaw and the tip of his nose. He presses his lips to Dan’s forehead, then on his cheek where his dimple hides, and finally on his mouth again.

“You’re gonna be the death of me,” Dan breathes against him, eyes half-lidded.

“What a wonderful way to die,” Phil muses with a smirk.

Dan hums and crosses his ankles over Phil’s leg, trapping him. “For the record,” he says, softly, “I’m so happy I got matched to you, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> they're cute :(


	8. Chapter 8

Phil grows more and more antsy the longer Dan and Gemma spend analysing the restaurant visit with Dan’s mum and grandma. He appreciates Gemma’s investment and her ability to get right to the core of things, but for some reason, she’s picking apart every last detail of the restaurant visit now.

Stifling a yawn, Phil slouches down a bit more on the sofa. There’s a big leafy plant in the corner next to Gemma, looking far healthier than any of the plants Phil has in his apartment, and he wonders briefly whether it’s real. It looks a bit too shiny to be a living plant, he thinks, but he’s far from an expert.

His fingers itch to fish his phone out of his pocket and text PJ to check whether he’s taking good care of his plants. He’d be rather sad to come home to nothing but brown leaves and drooping stems, though he supposes it’s not that different to coming home from spending a few days at his parents’ and finding his entire fauna collection on the brim of life upon his return.

“… Phil to continue keeping the conversation open,” Gemma says, and Phil blinks back into focus.

He subtly gauges Dan’s reaction so he can match his own to it, but Dan’s already looking at him with a knowing smile curling up the corners of his mouth.

“Yeah, agree,” Phil says as he looks back at Gemma, though he has no idea what he’s agreeing to.

A quiet laugh escapes Dan and he slings an arm around Phil’s shoulder to pull him closer, pressing a kiss to the side of his head. “She told us to continue talking our feelings through,” he says quietly, his breath hot against the shell of Phil’s ear.

Phil nods, trying to supress a fully-body shiver. Dan’s voice just… does things to him.

Especially when it’s so soft, so private.

So _close_.

If they were at home, or actually, any other place than this office would suffice, he’d crash their mouths together, but he can see Gemma smiling from the corner of his eye, and he’d really rather not get a detailed run-down of how to improve their kissing, or whatever it is that sexologists do.

Not that their kissing needs improving, anyway. Dan’s ace at kissing, their lips fitting together like they were specifically designed for that purpose. It’s a shame humans need, like, food and water and fresh air to survive, otherwise Phil would happily spend the rest of his life drinking Dan in, kissing until their lips go raw, mapping out all the dips and bumps on Dan’s body.

“Phil might need a walk in the park.” Gemma winks at him and Phil does his best to return a genuine smile. He tries not to let the guilt of zoning out again show on his face.

They pass another couple on their way out of the building, and Phil briefly wonders if it’s one of the other matches. If they are, they don’t look to happy with the experts’ choice, sitting at opposite ends of the sofa in the waiting room, both with frowns etched deep into their foreheads.

At least Phil isn’t going to end up with wrinkles after these five weeks.

As soon as they’re on the curb, Dan slots his fingers between Phil’s. “Phil,” he chides him gently, though Phil doesn’t know what for.

“What?”

“You could have at least _pretended_ to be paying attention.” Dan’s tone is stern, but he can’t keep the smile off his lips, and his eyes glister with fondness.

“Sorry. But it was _so_ _boring_ , Dan, I can’t believe you kept on talking so much.”

There’s a kiss pressed in his hair again. “Good to know you think the future of our relationship is boring.”

“That’s not – no, I–” Phil sputters. He elbows Dan in the ribs, but his thick coat absorbs most of the impact. “Fuck off,” he settles on.

“ _Ooh_ , watch that tone, mister!” Dan teases, swinging their linked hands between them.

“Here I was,” Phil sighs dramatically, “thinking about how in love with you I am while you and Gemma were talking about – what, the meaning of tea flavours or something?” He suddenly notices they’re walking in the opposite direction their flat is and pulls at Dan’s hand. “Hey, wrong way.”

“No, I’m gonna walk you to the park like Gemma suggested.”

“I’m not a dog!” Phil protests.

“Believe me, I know. It’d be much easier if you were though,” Dan says, looking left and right before crossing the street. “I wouldn’t find socks strewn about in every room, and I wouldn’t hit my head against all the cupboards you leave open, and I wouldn’t have to collect half a dozen of half-empty coffee mugs every time I’m loading the dishwasher.”

“Please, do continue. Don’t hold back on my account,” Phil mutters, rolling his eyes at Dan’s antics. He can’t see Dan’s face properly now, but they’ve had this conversation before, and Dan’s eyes are always shining with mirth at every one of Phil’s habits he lists.

Suddenly, Phil’s brain provides him with a flashback of his grandmother, years ago, complaining to his grandfather about forgetting to take bread out of the freezer in the morning and thaw it, _again_. With a shock, Phil realises it’s the exact tone of conversation he’s having with Dan now, the genuine annoyance softened by fond familiarity.

It’s the first time he realises how _married_ they are. Not merely in the official sense, but, even more, in the way they act, the way they bicker about things they also wouldn’t want any other way. It’s so domestic it’s painful.

Phil loves it.

♡

Four weeks into the experiment, Dan thought he’d no longer care about the constant cameras circling around them. Actually, he’s got rather good at ignoring both the cameras and the people holding them. However, Phil and he are now out on their first proper date since their honeymoon, and they haven’t even made it past the starters when Dan already has the urge to chuck his glass of water at the lens that’s currently pretty much _in_ his plate, filming a ridiculous close-up of the ravioli he ordered.

He shoots an annoyed glance at Phil, who doesn’t seem bothered and just shoots him an amused smile back.

Not so subtly, Dan picks up his cutlery, shooting the camera man an apologising look. “Sorry,” Dan tells him in a voice that sounds anything but sorry, “wouldn’t want this to go cold.” It’s a new guy they’ve not filmed with before, and Dan finds himself missing Oliver, who somehow always knows when to make himself sparse.

Though this man – Dan thinks he’s called Greg, but that could have also been their Uber driver’s name – lacks the ability to pick up on Dan’s mood, he does understand the verbal hint and backs off slightly, panning out to a wider view of the table.

Dan lets out a silent sight of relief and sees the corners of Phil’s lips curl up in response. He smiles back instinctively.

“Bon appétit,” Phil tells him in a questionable French accent as they both dig into their meals.

Dan’s mouth is watering at the smell alone, and when he takes his first bite, he actively has to stop himself from moaning out loud at the _ridiculously_ rich flavours. He does close his eyes as if he’s having a religious experience, and a voice in the back of his mind warns him that this footage will most likely be turned into a gif once the programme airs, but he doesn’t care because _damn_. This is some next-level shit.

He says exactly that to Phil as he opens his eyes again.

Phil shushes him. “You can’t say those things here, Dan,” he hisses between his teeth, looking around the restaurant to see if anyone overheard him.

A laugh bubbles up in Dan’s throat. He wants to reach out and place his hand on top of Phil’s, but the table is awkwardly wide even for someone with spaghetti limbs like himself, so he settles for hooking his foot around Phil’s ankle. “They’re not gonna kick us out for liking their food.”

“They are gonna kick you out for cussing amidst bank directors and lawyers,” Phil retorts.

It’s hard to tell how serious he’s being. It hadn’t taken long for Dan to figure out that Phil has a tendency to overthink social situations, and Phil has actually said the words _social anxiety_ out loud before, but sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between _socially anxious Phil_ and _overly-imaginative Phil_.

Dan suspects he’s dealing with the latter right now, so he looks around to prove Phil wrong. His eyes drift towards two young women sitting at the bar, one with bubble-gum pink hair and the other with faded blue in her blond locks. The pink-haired one is wearing a dress that spells out F*CK across the back and he raises his brow at Phil, subtly cocking his head in the women’s direction. “Look, if they let her in wearing something that literally says fuck, I’m pretty sure I’m allowed to say shit.”

“It doesn’t say fuck.”

“Yes, it does.” Dan glances at the woman again to double-check. He’s glad the women are sitting with their backs towards them, because he realises they’re being a bit creepy.

“It says _fck_ ,” Phil says. “Maybe it stands for fick and the asterisk is only the dot on the i.”

Dan stares at him blankly. “You talk _so_ much shit, Lester.”

Phil snorts. “As if you’re one to talk. There’s a reason we got matched together.”

“Somehow, I doubt our abilities to talk out of our arses–” he laughs when Phil shushes him again, “had anything to do with our match.”

Phil’s face goes more serious. “I wonder what did, though. Like, I can guess, based on our conversations and our interactions over the past month, but I’d love to see the full file they have about us.”

“Careful what you wish for,” Dan laughs, a little nervously. The idea of either of them ever getting details on their matching process isn’t particularly appealing to him. He can’t remember all the embarrassing things he revealed about himself along the way, but he’s sure there are many.

“Maybe they just went, _oh, look, it’s two giant gay men, let’s couple them_.”

“Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

Phil laughs, tongue peeking out between his teeth. It would look plain stupid if it were anyone else, but because it’s Phil, Dan finds himself to be endeared.

It’s worrying, how many things there are that he used to get annoyed by, until Phil was the one to do them.

Dan wonders how long this infatuation will last. He has a hard time imagining himself ever genuinely being annoyed by Phil, but he knows that eventually, the initial rush of being with him will wear out, and his rose-coloured glasses will make way for a realistic outlook again.

(He suspects he’s always going to feel butterflies in his stomach at the sight of Phil’s smile though. There is no way he’s ever _not_ going to be affected by that.)

♡

The smell of tomato sauce greets Phil in the hallway, and he almost stumbles over a large cardboard package when he steps into the lounge, hitting his hip on the corner of it. His hipbone leaves a dent in the packaging and he’s glad that for once, _he’s_ not gonna have a bruise from walking into furniture. He still hasn’t quite memorised the layout of this flat well enough to navigate it in the dark hours of the morning when his brain isn’t fully functioning yet.

Safe for a shiny blue ribbon and an address sticker, the box is bare of any more information that could tell him where it’s from.

Dan is hard at work in the kitchen, chopping up some mushrooms and a large bell pepper, so Phil hooks his chin over his shoulder and kisses his cheek as to not distract him.

“You got me a gift?” he asks, slipping his cold hands under Dan’s jumper. It may only be November yet, but London has been seeing near freezing point temperatures all week. Phil is quietly hoping for a white Christmas already.

Dan shivers slightly at Phil’s cold touch, but he leans back into his chest nonetheless, and Phil can smell the apple shampoo in his curls. “Not mine,” Dan says, stirring the sauce. “Charlotte brought it over earlier. She gave me strict instructions to open it together, with the camera crew.”

Phil frowns, a little confused. “What is it?”

“Wedding pictures, I think.” Dan shrugs, as if he doesn’t care. “Can you put water on the table?”

If there’s one thing Phil can’t stand, it’s surprises. He never really outgrew his childhood habit of feeling out the shapes of his Christmas presents, or shaking them to feel the weight.

His eyes keep flickering back towards the cardboard mystery in their living room the entire time they’re having dinner, and as soon as Dan notices what’s got him so fidgety, he laughs and makes a show of chewing each bite for a minute.

Phil tries to glare at him, but Dan’s smiling as he eats, his dimple moving, and it’s distracting.

“Maybe we should do the washing up now, instead of letting everything pile up again,” Dan suggests when he has finally, _finally_ cleared his plate.

Phil nearly growls at him.

Dan does make them take the plates and cutlery into the kitchen and put them into the dishwasher, but he agrees to leave the pots in the sink for now. (The catch is that Phil has to promise to wash _and_ dry them later, rather than their usual teamwork, but Phil would pretty much agree to anything at this point if it means he can open their surprise gift.)

“If I had known this is how you react to presents, I would’ve ordered stuff from Amazon every day and made you clean the entire house,” Dan teases as they get settled on the sofa. Oliver is back on camera duty today, filming them from the front, and the second camera, handled by Nate, is set up at an angle so viewers can properly see the package in their hands.

“As if I didn’t already clean the entire house,” Phil retorts.

He doesn’t need to see Dan’s face to know he’s rolling his eyes. “Uh-uh, sure.”

Drumming his fingers on the cardboard, Phil throws a questioning glance at Helen to check if they can start opening it.

As soon as she nods, Phil slides his finger under the tape, wiggling it loose before ripping it off in one go. Next to him, Dan does the same on the other side, and they slide out the content of the box onto their laps.

It is indeed their wedding photos. At the bottom rests a heavy frame, and on top, a large envelope.

They set the frame aside carefully, facing the picture away from them so they can look at the smaller prints in the envelope first.

Though Phil’s fingers itch to take the pictures out, he doesn’t want to accidentally smudge them or give them dog ear, so he lets Dan have the honour.

They both gasp before they’ve even seen the first photo in full. It’s one of the first they took together, just the two of them standing back to back in front of an ivy-overgrown brick wall. Phil fleetingly notices how the wind gave his quiff some extra volume and how his cheeks are lightly tinted pink, before his gaze settles on Dan and all thoughts fly out of his head.

He is undeniably gorgeous.

His curls are perfectly styled on top of his head and his lips are bitten red, probably from nerves. The one eye that is visible is swirling with brown, so rich and so warm in colour, it almost looks like there’s a flame in it.

And if Phil had thought Dan looked good in white before, he’s stunned again. On their wedding day, he hadn’t fully been able to appreciate the way the white brings out the subtle tanned red undertone in Dan’s skin, or how his nose is straight until it reaches the tip, where it curls ever so slightly upwards.

Without saying anything, Dan flips to the next picture. They’re walking towards the camera now, Phil’s head tipped back in a laugh, Dan looking at him with crinkles by his eyes and a wide smile on his face. It’s a shame the photo is taken from the wrong side to show Dan’s dimple, too.

“Look how happy we were,” Phil murmurs.

Dan leans into his side, and Phil takes the hint for a kiss. It’s short, more a peck than a proper snog, and Phil is reminded of their first kiss, just hours before these photos were taken. So much has changed since then, and yet, so much has remained, too. The pictures prove, crystal clear, that Dan and he had been comfortable around each other from the very start, despite all the unknowns.

“We’re still happy, aren’t we?” Dan asks, quietly, a soft smile playing around his lips.

Phil can’t do anything but nod. They are.

Every picture is even more beautiful than the last, no trace of awkwardness anywhere. Charlotte somehow managed to capture the milliseconds when their smiles weren’t strained yet, or when they were looking straight at each other before averting their gaze shyly.

The last photo they look at is the framed one. Immediately, it’s clear that the smaller prints had done nothing to prepare them for this image.

It’s the one where Phil is sitting between Dan’s legs, and though Phil vividly remembers the stiffness in his shoulders and Dan’s hesitation to put his arms around Phil, none of that is visible now. They look like they’ve known each other for years, Phil’s upper body twisted slightly towards Dan, his head once again thrown back in a laugh, Dan leaning his cheek against the top of Phil’s head, smiling an open-mouthed smile.

“Wow,” Dan breathes, and Phil hums in agreement. When he looks up though, he notices Dan is staring intently at Phil’s side of the photo, rather than admiring what Phil was looking at.

He laughs softly. “Wow indeed. I knew you were fit, but this…” Phil whistles through his teeth. “It’s something else.”

“Have you even _seen_ yourself?” Dan traces his finger over picture Phil’s jawline, down his neck. “I’m gonna scoop your eyes out and replace mine with them.”

Phil snorts, pushing his face into Dan’s shoulder. It’s such a dumb, stupid, _Dan_ thing to say, and it hits him again how fond he is of this boy, how much he wants to have more of this, more of Dan.

It could be scary, how intense his feelings are, how strongly he hopes their adventure won’t end next week, but when he looks at Dan, looks at the way he looks at Phil in their wedding photos, he thinks they’re definitely on the same page.

“We should hang this up somewhere,” he says.

“Here?”

Phil shakes his head. “No, not here. We’re only gonna be here for another week. In our next flat.”

Dan smiles. “Next flat, huh? Sounds like you’re pretty confident I’ll still want to live with you.”

“Don’t even joke.” Phil rolls his eyes at Dan with a fond smile.

“It’d be cool to hang all of them, if we get frames for the other prints, too,” Dan says. “We could have a gallery wall with just pictures of ourselves.”

Phil can see it so clearly, a wall filled with sleek black frames, showcasing their wedding day, and later on, more memories. Holiday photos in which Dan will look sun-kissed and Phil will look sunburnt. Selfies taken on cinema dates. Christmas celebrations. Maybe a pet, at some point, a fish or a puppy or something. Phil’s hair going grey at the roots, Dan’s crow feet becoming permanent.

He doesn’t tell Dan his vision, just says, “My dad gave me a drill for Christmas once. I’ll look for it once I’m back in mine and PJ’s flat.” He doesn’t say _home_ , because he doubts it’ll feel like that anymore. He’s found that feeling in a person.

“No offence, babe,” Dan says gently, “but I’d really hate for those pictures to come crashing down within twenty-four hours of you putting them up.”

Phil knows it’s an insult, knows he should pout and make Dan feel bad about doubting his DIY skills, but his mind is stuck on _babe_ and he can’t do anything but smile dazedly at Dan.

♡

“I can’t believe I spent three years setting you up with guys and you’ve just gone and fallen in love with a goddamn stranger,” Bryony complains, stealing another fry from Dan’s plate.

At this rate, he’s gonna be left with a whole lot of dips and no fries. What a shame it would be to have to order another serving of them.

“It’s very telling about your matchmaker skills, isn’t it?” Dan muses.

She huffs. “Tell me you wouldn’t have dated Luke if he hadn’t moved to Australia.”

“Okay, fine,” he has to agree. “But that was one guy out of… a lot.”

“Not _that_ many!” She laughs. “Good sex though, right?”

He shrugs, feigning indifference. “Meh. Decent.”

It’s a testimony to their years of friendship that Bryony doesn’t even roll her eyes at him. She knows entirely too much about Dan’s sex life to even consider believing he hasn’t enjoyed his escapades under the sheets (or on top of, or without any at all) with about half of the guys she set him up with.

“So, Phil?” she prompts, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear. Three weeks in sunny South Africa has faded the hot pink colour to a more pastel tint, giving her a fairy complexion.

Dan stares at the glistering of the lights catching in her hair, trying to find words that can do the last four weeks justice. He comes up short.

“He’s… great,” he says with a sigh. Bryony’s brows fit together in confusion at his lack of excitement. “Like, really, _really_ great,” Dan continues, distractedly stabbing at the salad on his plate as his mind wanders off. “You know I don’t believe in destiny and one true love and all that crap, but…” He pauses, suddenly noticing the look on Bryony’s face.

She’s holding back a smile, the corners of her lips curled up the smallest amount, and she’s got a hand tucked under her chin as she listens.

Dan breaks their eye contact, looking down at the candle in the middle of the table. It’s been flickering weakly since they sat down, the flame disappearing almost completely before somehow reviving itself for another burst of fire.

“It does feel like he’s my actual soulmate.” He smiles a little, then rushes to add, “If souls were a real thing that exists, that is.”

“Aw,” Bryony coos, “how sweet. You’ve got it bad, Danny boy.”

Heat rises up to his cheeks. “I know,” he mumbles.

She places her hand on his, stroking her thumb over his wrist bone once. “I’m glad you’re happy. I’m glad he makes you happy.” She takes a bite of her chicken salad and chews it carefully before asking, “I’m guessing you’ve made your decision then? For next week?”

Next week. The words hit Dan like a truck, the reality of the experiment coming to an end sinking in for the first time. They’ve got eight more days together in the little flat they’ve made home before they go back to their own places, back to life as it was – though hopefully _with_ each other in it.

“I have.” He presses his lips together. “We haven’t talked about it yet though. I don’t know what Phil’s choice is.”

A wide smile appears on Bryony’s face. “If he’s even half as smitten as you are, I know exactly what his decision will be. Don’t you worry.” She shakes her head with a laugh. “I’ve seen the way he looks at you when we facetimed.”

Dan smiles, too. Though Phil doesn’t exactly give him mixed signals, Dan has still been worried he’s been misinterpreting Phil’s actions, or hearing more in his words than what he meant. His own vision is so clouded by Phil, it’s difficult to know for sure he isn’t projecting his own feelings on Phil.

It’s nice to get confirmation from someone outside of their little bubble, nice to hear he hasn’t been imagining things.

“Phil does the same thing with his face when he looks at you,” Bryony says.

“Huh?”

She waves her hand at his face. “The scrunched-up nose thing. The bitten back smile. You pull that face when you talk about him, and he pulls the same face when he looks at you. Like you’re just so happy your face is bursting at the seams.”

As much as he wants to prove her wrong, Dan has to admit she’s right. He’s seen it in the wedding photos and the spontaneous selfies they’ve taken, the way they both go slightly stupid-faced at each other. He’d thought it was one of those small things nobody else would notice, but it seems like they’ve been more obvious than he thought.

Not seeing Bryony for three of the most important weeks in his life leads them to stay at the restaurant until closing time at midnight, their conversation flowing from Dan’s honeymoon with Phil over Bryony’s surfing fails in South Africa to Dan retelling the lead-up to their first kiss and Bryony contemplating signing herself up for the next season of _Married At First Sight_.

It’s late when Dan unlocks the front door, dimmed lighting spilling out from the living room. He quietly toes of his shoes and puts his coat away before making his way into the lounge on sock-clad feet, finding Phil fast asleep on the couch.

His heart leaps, and he stands taking in the sight for a moment. Phil’s mouth is slightly open, his breath coming out in little puffs, and the little furrow that’s so often present between his brows is smoothed out now.

It feels cruel having to wake him from such a peaceful sleep, but Phil has complained about a crick in his neck after taking a nap on the sofa before, so Dan crouches down by his side and brushes his fingers over the baby hairs by Phil’s hairline.

“Phil,” he whispers, almost inaudible even to his own ears. “Phil,” he repeats, slightly louder. “Time for bed,” he murmurs when Phil blinks one eye open. He swallows the _baby_ that almost slips out, because last time he tried out pet names, Phil looked like he was gonna have a heart attack, and Dan'd like to keep his husband alive at least a little while longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so I don't mean to alarm you but... next chapter is the last one...


	9. Chapter 9

Maybe it should be concerning, the amount of time they spend curled up into each other on the couch.

Dan’s arm has gone numb where it’s stuck under Phil’s shoulder, but he makes no move to pull it away. Phil’s got his head resting on Dan’s chest, one leg slung over Dan’s, their sides plastered together.

It had hit them both at the same time, the realisation that they’ve entered the last week of the experiment, and though they both know it isn’t their last week together by any means, they’ve been moping around all evening anyway.

It’s a strange sort of nostalgia, when you’re missing something before it has even ended, and Dan finds himself wishing they wouldn’t have to make a decision next week. He isn’t worried about the outcome of the decision moment, but he hasn’t had enough of this yet.

He hasn’t had enough of coming home to find Phil cooking, of waking up to Phil stumbling around trying to find his glasses, of getting his hair played with while watching tv.

Hell, he’s gonna miss stumbling into open cupboards and slipping over stray socks, and he would never tell Phil but he’s even a little sad about not having someone distracting him while playing Mario Kart.

It feels like his feelings have all become mixed together in his chest, an explosive cocktail swirling around until something sets it aflame.

Dan tightens his hold on Phil and presses a kiss to the top of his head. Phil snuggles even closer.

There’s a rerun of some Attenborough program on the tv, giant sperm whales swimming around on the screen. Normally, he’d joke about it, but he can’t muster up the energy to put the required enthusiasm into his voice.

“I thought five weeks was gonna be plenty,” Phil says, a rasp in his voice due to their long silence.

Dan hums. He’d been worried about it, before the wedding, whether he’d be able to live with someone for five weeks and not want to murder them.

As it turns out, he can. If someone gave him a contract to live with Phil for five years, he’d sign it in a heartbeat. (He would probably want to murder Phil at some point during that timeframe though. Dan can only take so many left-on lights and half-drunk cups of coffee.)

They fall silent again. There are so many things that haven’t been said yet, so many things Dan still wants to ask Phil, but his thoughts are all over the place and he thinks of something else before he’s finished the first thought.

Suddenly, he remembers one of the questions from the envelope, one they didn’t get around to answering because they stopped doing the game. They had no issues finding conversation starters, and it was way more interesting to talk about Phil’s weird childhood quirks or Dan’s passion for finding the perfect dip than responding to psychologically manufactured questions.

“Did you see that question in the question envelope?” he asks Phil, resting his cheek on top of his head. “The one that was like, _what’s something you appreciate about your partner already_? I feel like answering it.”

He can feel Phil’s lips tugging up into a smile against his chest. “Go ahead.”

“Everything.” He presses his lips to Phil’s temple, lingering there for a few seconds. “The answer is everything.”

Phil lifts his head, looking into Dan’s eyes, and Dan is struck once again by the intensity of the blue in his irises. Then Phil ducks his head and bites at Dan’s collar bone. It’s something he’s been doing more often lately, sinking his teeth into whatever part of Dan is nearest, much like a puppy bites at people’s ankles: to show excitement, to ask for attention, to let out pent-up energy that feels too big for his body.

A laugh rumbles through Dan’s chest. He pulls Phil up, crashing their mouths together with more force than necessary. Phil’s lips give easily, moulding against Dan’s like that’s where they were always meant to fit.

There’s an urgency to this kiss, their breaths coming out in gasps like they’ll die if they don’t get more of each other. Kissing Phil hasn’t been a novelty for a while now, but it doesn’t stop the fireworks from going off inside his brain.

Heat pools low in Dan’s stomach and he can feel Phil’s growing excitement pressing into his hip. It’s overwhelming, the way Phil wants him as much as he wants Phil.

It’s not like they haven’t touched each other yet, but they’ve kept it above the belt so far, hopping in separate showers whenever it got to be too much.

Dan isn’t sure what has been holding them back before, but he’s sure they’re not gonna hold back tonight. Not with the way Phil’s pressing into him, or the way Dan’s heart is hammering out of his chest.

He pulls away from Phil with a gasp, the fresh oxygen rushing to his brain immediately. He throws an arm over his eyes so he doesn’t see the heat behind Phil’s eyes. It’s all entirely too much.

“God, _Phil_ ,” he breathes, his chest heaving.

“Just Phil,” his husband quips.

“I hate you.” It has never sounded less like a threat.

“I can tell,” Phil hums, his hand travelling south over Dan’s stomach, rucking up his T-shirt, brushing his fingers over Dan’s thigh. He’s still wearing his jeans, but even through the thick denim, Phil’s touch feels torturous, and Dan feels like he’s got no blood left in his brain.

“Don’t – tease,” he grits out.

Phil laughs airily and pushes their lips together again. It’s uncoordinated and messy from the start, their teeth clanking together and their tongues getting in each other’s way, but it’s so, _so_ hot at the same time.

It’s probably the first time Dan’s brain has melted before he’s even orgasmed, and he’s so out of it he doesn’t notice Phil’s hand working on his zipper before his hand finds its way inside. Dan has half a brain cell left to marvel at the coolness of Phil’s touch, until Phil decides to really start working for it, and Dan is reduced to nothing more than a bundle of nerve endings.

♡

Phil has never been an organised packer to begin with. Even for short weekend trips home, he’d always end up with more clothes on the ground than inside of it.

It’s even worse when he’s trying to fit five weeks worth of stuff into two suitcases and a backpack.

Currently, he’s got half of his wardrobe contents spread out on the bed, the other half folded and stacked into semi-neat piles on the floor. He wonders if his clothes have somehow reproduced during his stay, because there is no way he would have been able to cram it all into the large suitcase.

He sighs and starts moving piles from the floor into the shell of the suitcase. Miraculously, he gets all of it to fit in just the top lid. Some T-shirts have come undone in the process, but he figures it’s easier to iron them rather than trying to refold them.

He gets to work on the second half of his clothes, filling up the other half of the suitcase until there isn’t a square inch that isn’t filled with fabric. It bulges up over the border a little, but Phil should be able to get the zipper closed if he puts his entire body weight on top of the suitcase.

He hopes.

He really doesn’t fancy having to start over again.

Leaving his clothing, he moves on to all of the random crap he moved in with him. He barely even remembers what he brought – his phone charger, of course, and his noise-cancelling headphones, as well as his laptop, and he vaguely recalls a lava lamp sticking out of his backpack, though he has no clue where it went.

Looking around the bedroom, he doesn’t see a lava lamp hiding anywhere, but his eye does fall on an item of clothing thrown over the headboard. It’s not his, but he grabs it anyway. Traces of Dan still linger in the fabric, a slightly sweaty smell mixed in with musky deodorant.

Surely Dan won’t mind if Phil just borrows this shirt for a while.

He stuffs it at the bottom of the backpack, out of sight in case Dan goes looking for it, and stands up to make his way around the flat to gather his things. His notebook lies on the kitchen counter, next to his headache medicine, and he almost trips over his laptop charger, still connected to the outlet.

When he walks into the lounge, he discovers that his fuzzy blanket is currently in use, covering most of Dan’s body. He tugs at the corner of it, making Dan look up.

“That’s mine,” Phil says, though he makes no move to pull it away.

Dan clutches the top edge with one hand, the other holding the book he’s reading. Phil can’t read the title from where he stands, but judging by the image on the cover, it’s some sort of dystopian science fiction story. It seems fit for Dan.

“Not anymore. We’re married now, everything is shared.”

Phil laughs. “Nu-uh. We signed a prenuptial agreement.”

Dan sighs. “Fuck, I forgot.”

He looks cute, his lips jutted out in a pout, his curls wild and unruly. It makes Phil’s chest ache.

“I’m willing to make a deal with you though.”

Dan’s eyebrows go up. “Oh? What kind of deal?”

“You can have the blanket if I can have one of your T-shirts.”

Pursing his lips, Dan studies him, narrowing his eyes slightly. “Which one?”

Crossing his fingers behind his back for good luck, Phil replies, “The eclipse one.”

“ _Ooh_.” Dan laughs, all suspicion gone from his face. He shrugs. “Sure. Don’t be surprised if it falls apart when you touch it – it’s years old.”

“Don’t care,” Phil mumbles. Then, louder, he adds, “I’m glad you agree though, because I’d packed it away already.”

“You–” Dan throws his head back, laughing. Phil can see straight up his nose, and he hates to admit that he doesn’t even find it gross or unappealing. He really is so gone for this boy it’s embarrassing.

“Little kleptomaniac,” Dan teases, voice soft. “Anything else you’ve nicked from me?”

Phil smiles. “Not yet.”

Dan sits up, putting his feet on the ground. “I think I’m gonna keep you company in there anyway. Just in case.”

Pulling a serious face, Phil nods. “Of course.” Butterflies flutter in his stomach when Dan stands up and drapes the blanket over his shoulder like a cape. Phil reaches out, tugging at the corners to bring Dan closer, and kisses Dan.

It’s easy to forget about the mess strewn about on the bedroom floor when he’s got his favourite thing of all right here in front of him, kissing him back eagerly. Sliding his hands lower, Phil has half a mind to take a… _relaxing_ break from packing, but Dan’s hand circles his wrist before he reaches his goal and he kisses Phil’s forehead with a smile.

“Packing first.”

Phil can’t hold back a whine from the back of his throat, and Dan pecks his lips.

“You’ll be useless otherwise,” Dan tells him.

He’s not wrong. The other day, Phil had spent a good hour recovering from Dan’s magic hands, and his legs had felt like jelly for the remainder of the evening.

Still, he furrows his brows to glare at Dan in silent protest. Dan laughs and grabs him by the hand to pull him along to the bedroom, pausing in the doorway when he sees the chaos.

“This looks like a tornado has ripped through our room.”

“It was worse before,” Phil informs him.

Dan looks at him in disbelief. “I struggle to see how it could have been worse than this.” He lets go of Phil’s hand and flops down onto the empty half of the bed, where Phil has packed away the clothing already. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you’re a messy packer, seeing how you always mark your territory with stuff anyway.”

“I don’t _mark my territory_ ,” Phil quaffs. “You’re just a neat freak.”

“Or you’re a slob.” Dan stretches out his foot to point at the suitcase that’s still empty. “Hey, the quicker you get this sorted, the quicker you can have your reward.”

‘I’m not a dog,” Phil grumbles, but he does get to work.

Nothing like a bit of pent-up sexual energy to get him going.

♡

The doorbell rings at nine o’clock in the morning. Dan’s been on his phone since six, texting Phil about the weird noises in his flat and how uncomfortable his mattress is and how utterly dumb it is to make them asleep apart the night before decision day as if they’re some chaste American couple waiting to be wedded.

Phil has been texting him back the entire time, so at least Dan isn’t the only one who’s struggling to adapt to sleeping without the heavy, warm weight of a body next to him.

He drags himself out of bed and opens the door for the camera crew, greeting them with nothing more than a mumbled _morning_.

Throughout the weeks, he’s got to know them little by little, and although he rarely minded having them following him like a shadow, looming in the corners of the flat, he can’t say he’s sorry to part with them soon, either.

As if they sense he’s not in the mood to talk, Oliver and Helen follow him around the flat as he gets ready, simply getting the shots they need without making him answer questions. It’s clear that Helen has to bite her tongue a few times, but Dan thinks the dark circles under his eyes tell everything there is to know anyway.

There is no car waiting for him this time, and he sighs quietly before starting the short walk to the underground station. It’s only two stops on a crammed train, but it could just as well have been hours.

Phil hasn’t replied to his last message and Dan can only guess it means a tv crew arrived at his place, too.

He slides his hand in his pocket, feeling the rumpled edges of the paper inside. He spent hours last night trying to find words to accurately describe what a rollercoaster the last weeks have been and how grateful he is to have spent them with Phil, while in reality, three words would suffice to convey the message.

His foot taps rhythmically against the stone tiling of the corridor, the same one he was in five weeks ago. Nothing has changed – the air still has a chill to it, the paintings are right where they have been for who knows how many years, and the flowers in the vase on the mantle are looking as vibrant as they were when he first stood here.

Fake flowers then. Dan doesn’t know why that surprises him.

He’s tempted to reach out his arms and feel the leaves, but he keeps his hands firmly by his side.

Helen ducks out of the room, and the door slams shut behind her, sending a shockwave of air through the corridor.

A minute later, she comes back and nods at Dan. “You can go,” she mouths.

A wave of emotions crashes over Dan, his heartbeat changing from a steady _thump thump thump_ to the quick fluttering of a hummingbird.

He swallows, places his hand on the doorknob, and turns it.

Immediately, his eyes find Phil’s across the room, the same way they did the first time, and his lips curl into a smile before he can make a conscious decision to do so.

Phil is smiling, too, all teeth and crinkled eyes, and it’s nearly impossible not to pull him into a hug. However, they were given very strict instructions to not kiss or cuddle before they’ve read out their letters, something about keeping the suspense for the viewer or some other bullshit.

As if their entire body language isn’t _screaming_ that this is not the end for them.

“Hi,” Phil breathes, and he sounds as affected as Dan feels.

“Hi,” he says, his voice sounding steadier than he would’ve given himself credit for.

Perhaps it should feel weird, standing in an empty room, with the man he married without even knowing his age or the name of his parents.

Just weeks ago, Dan had walked into this room, filled with their loved ones, to start the biggest adventure of his life so far, and now here he is.

In that same room, with that same man, just a lot more confident in their happy ending.

Helen coughs, and Dan realises he’s been staring at Phil like a lovesick idiot for too long. Phil’s got the same dazed look on his face, and Dan ducks his head before he can do something stupid like kiss him senseless.

He scrapes his throat and pulls out his notes. They are crinkled so much he struggles to make out his writing, but it doesn’t matter anyway. He knows exactly what he wants to say.

“Phil.” Somehow, his voice manages to break on that single syllable already. “Phil,” he says again, slightly steadier. “When I signed up for _Married At First Sight_ , I didn’t dare to hope for anything. I saw no reason why they would even consider me as a candidate, let alone have me go through the entire matching process. As time passed and I had to do more and more interviews, I thought it would one day make for a fun anecdote to tell my friends on a drunk night out, or something I’d laugh at with colleagues when we inevitably discussed the program during our lunch break. Except, it didn’t stop when I expected it to.”

He glances up. Phil’s eyes are shiny.

“When I got told they had found a match for me, I didn’t dare to hope for anything, either. By now, you know I’m a man of hard, straight facts.”

Phil snorts and Dan has to bite his lip to keep from laughing too. He throws Phil a look, shaking his head slightly as if to warn him.

“So for the next month or so, between being told I was matched and actually getting married, my feelings went back and forth between being sort of excited and completely scared out of my mind. I’m sure you can relate,” he adds with a grin. “And then the big day arrived, and I still didn’t dare to hope for anything, because what are the chances of successful marriage anyway?”

He pauses briefly, glancing at the note in his hand. The sweat from his fingertips has blurred the ink, making it even more unreadable than before.

“And then I saw you, and I remember thinking, _at least he’s got kind eyes_. I had no idea what was coming. I’m not even going to try to summarise the past five weeks, because you were there, and you know how crazy it all was. I just want to tell you that this, you, these past five weeks – they were the most fun I’ve ever had. By far.”

Phil makes an aborted move, like he wants to step forward and crush Dan in a hug, but Dan isn’t done yet. He puts up his hand and mouths _wait_ with a small smile.

“And I’m glad I didn’t dare to hope for anything,” he says around the growing knot in his throat, “because nothing could’ve prepared me for the real thing. You’re better than anything I could have hoped for.”

There’s no stopping Phil then. He gets his arms around Dan’s shoulders, burying his head in Dan’s neck, stepping on Dan’s toes because his sense of coordination didn’t magically become better overnight.

Dan hugs him back just as tightly, feeling Phil’s ribs against his own, and he can’t hold back the tears that have been prickling at the back of his eyes for a while now. Phil sniffles against his neck, and there’s a damp wetness that should feel disgusting except it _doesn’t_.

“I’m not gonna do my speech,” Phil mumbles, smiling through his tears. “You said it all.”

Dan kisses him with entirely too much tongue considering there’s a camera on them. “Tell me anyway,” he breathes into Phil’s mouth.

Pulling away feels almost impossible, but Dan manages, if only barely. He keeps one hand resting on the jut of Phil’s hip, wiping the tears of Phil’s cheeks with his other.

The blue of Phil’s eyes seems even more vibrant now, an actual ocean pooling behind his irises.

If Dan were an artist, he’d spent his entire life trying to mix paints to get the exact shading of Phil’s eyes.

♡

Phil leans his forehead against Dan’s, twisting his fingers in the collar of Dan’s jacket. The contrast between wedding-day Dan and present-day Dan couldn’t be starker, the all-white suit replaced by head-to-toe black, which Phil has come to learn is Dan’s uniform most days.

There’s a lot more he has learnt since he first laid eyes on the tall, handsome, dark-haired stranger.

Said stranger is currently drawing tiny circles on Phil’s hip with his thumb, and Phil pecks his lips before straightening his back and trying to remember the mini speech he’d prepared.

It’s hard not to feel self-conscious after Dan’s incredible one, but Phil pushes those thoughts away and focuses on Dan’s face.

Or not, because that’s distracting, too, he quickly realises. He settles his gaze on the spot between Dan’s eyebrows instead. Nothing sexy about that.

Except…

He shakes his head at himself, noticing the corners of Dan’s mouth twitching like he’s fighting off a smile.

“Right,” Phil whispers, mostly to himself. “Dan Howell,” he says, louder. “You’ve already said all the things I wanted to say, and you did it way better than I could have done, but there are a few things I’d like to add.” He pauses, looking at the ring on his finger. “Over the past weeks, I have come to know you as someone with a rich assortment of swearwords, a distinct hate for spiders and moths, and a habit of hiding sweets in weird places.”

“That’s because you’ll eat them all otherwise,” Dan tells him with a laugh.

Phil smiles. “But more than just those small observations, I’ve come to know you as someone who’s passionate about making an impact in the world, someone who doesn’t shy away from questioning everything and everyone, including himself, and someone who knows what he wants. I admire you for that, because I still haven’t quite figured that out. Except for one thing.” He laces their hands together. “I want you, for a lot longer than the time we’ve had so far. If you’ll have me,” he tacks on, as if he can’t see his own feelings mirrored in Dan’s eyes.

“ _Yes_ , you idiot,” Dan says with a grin. He brings their lips together again, softer than their previous kiss, a promise they’re making to each other. Dan still tastes like strawberry and mint, but Phil has identified the last component, too, now.

It’s Dan.

If it weren’t for the camera, Phil would be perfectly content to stay right here wrapped up in Dan for the rest of the day, but he’s got plans and they most definitely do not involve an audience, so he detaches himself from Dan, ignoring the way Dan subconsciously juts his bottom lip out ever so slightly.

They make quick work of getting the microphones unclipped and saying their goodbyes to the team that has seen their relationship unfold in real time. They make arrangements to go out for drinks once the season has aired, and Helen fishes for an invite to the renewal of their vows. Dan laughs and tells her they have no such plans just yet, and Phil promises they’ll send her a housewarming invite instead, even though they have no plans for that, either.

Phil feels like he’s walking on air as they step outside, into a life without cameras. Next to him, Dan is beaming, his dimple disappearing deep into his cheek. Phil reaches out and presses it with his finger, just out of curiosity.

This is the kind of thing he gets to do, touching his husband because he wants to, because he makes Phil happy.

Phil’s mind spins with the realisation that six months ago, marriage had seemed like something that was never going to be in the cards for him, and now he’s got a ring around his finger and a man by his side and his face is going to split in half if he smiles any wider.

He makes a mental note to buy PJ a cake or something, because it’s his stupid drunk brain that had come up with the suggestion of signing up for _Married At First Sight_ , and look what it lead to.

Phil presses a kiss to Dan’s temple, realising they’re walking as if they’ve got somewhere to go, except they hadn’t made any plans.

“Where are we going?” he asks.

One corner of Dan’s mouth curls up. “Mine? I thought we could… celebrate.” The intention of his words is clear, and Phil nods.

“Hey,” he says, because he hadn’t finished his speech the way he’d planned to, and the words have been burning in his throat for a while now. He pulls Dan to a stop, taking in their environment.

There’s a garbage bin a metre away from them, and the side of a parked van nearby has been vandalised with crude graffiti, and the faint smell of urine is coming their way from an alley a bit further up the street. It’s everything but the romantic setting Phil had envisioned, but he doesn’t want to hold it in any longer.

“I love you,” he tells Dan.

Dan scrunches up his face like he’s trying not to smile and moves closer into Phil, placing a hand at the back of his neck. “I love you,” he says against Phil’s lips before kissing him, short and sweet. “And I want to get you home right now because you’re fucking sexy in that jumper and I want to get if off you.” He bites at Phil’s earlobe.

“That doesn’t make sense,” Phil breathes, turning his head to give Dan better access.

Dan scrapes his teeth down his neck, sucking lightly where Phil’s neck meets his shoulder. They shouldn’t be doing this, out in the open like this, in a dingy street that looks like it was made for drug deals, but _god_ , does Dan know how to work his mouth.

“Come on,” Dan urges, his brain seemingly more coherent than Phil’s at the moment, “home.”

The word has never sounded so enticing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's a wrap! ♡ Thank you so much to the people who read this story before it got marked completed, I admire your bravery. Thank you to those who left kudos and comments, it really does mean more than you know. And thank you to you, for getting to the end. I hope this story made you smile at least once.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments are appreciated!  
> You can find me on Twitter under the same name.


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